


Who Wants to be a Hero

by Rodinia, Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canonical major character deaths, F/M, Garrus as Couples Counselor, Hammerhead is Not Mako, Mako Is Love, Shepard Hates Politicians, Written While Playing, additional tags to be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 09:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 83
Words: 106,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4741853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Rodinia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caught between life and death after blowing the Reapers to hell, Commander Shepard looks back at the journey that led her to that point.</p><p>This was written as I played through the games.  There are some deviations from canon involved, but nothing completely canon-breaking.</p><p>Spacer/War Hero/mostly Paragon Vanguard Shepard.</p><p>Rated for language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Star Child Lied

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly wrote this for my own personal amusement, not intending to publish it. But I mentioned it to a friend and he informed me that I had to put it somewhere he could read it, so here it is.

My name is Juliet Shepard. You’ve probably heard it. The Juliet part might throw you. I swear, there were days when even _I_ thought my first name was “Commander”.

Yeah. That Shepard. See? I knew you’d heard my name before. Hell, who hasn’t?

I’m a space kid. Born in space, raised in space, only seemed fitting to die in space. The Star Child said I would die, that after what Cerberus had to do to rebuild me, I was too much synthetic to survive if I chose to destroy synthetic life.

Here’s hoping that wasn’t the only thing he lied about.

I’m not kidding about the born in space. My mom was supposed to get to Earth or one of the colonies, but she refused to leave her ship with things still so tense with the turians until the last minute – and then I just had to come a little earlier than expected. For the first couple of years, I was with her. Then Dad got assigned to a research station, and it was deemed safer for me to go be with him. I went back and forth over the years. The longest I stayed in one place was aboard the SSV Orinoco, when both my parents were stationed there. That’s how it was from the time I was twelve until I was fourteen. Dad left, reassigned to another ship, but I stayed with Mom until she left too.

I can’t imagine it came as a surprise to anyone when, on my eighteenth birthday, I handed the captain of the ship I was on enlistment papers. He wasted no time making it official, and I joined the Alliance military. I was always considered a good soldier, but during the Skyllian Blitz, I came to the attention of the N7 program.

They say I’m a hero. This is what they point to when asked when I became one. I was on shore leave of all things when these asshole pirates invaded Elysium, the colony I was visiting. Seriously? I can’t take shore leave without something happening. I belong in space.

Anyway, I managed to rally the people of Elysium to fight back. They say I held the pirates off single-handedly. That’s… there’s a lot of exaggeration in the stories I hear about me. Sure, I was the only trained soldier. And, okay, there were a fuckton of pirates, and I kept my guys alive. That’s why N7 came calling.

And five years later, that’s why the Council came calling. That’s when it all _really_ began…


	2. Eden Prime

I didn’t know it when Joker made the comment about Spectres being trouble, but he had no idea how right he was. There were a lot of things I didn’t know, standing on the bridge with Joker and Kaidan Alenko . Including how important both men would become to me.

Next time I see him, gonna ask Joker why he stuck by a Spectre for so long. Because I was definitely trouble.

I thought it was a shakedown cruise, a quick trip to test the stealth system and shake out the bugs. 

The first hint that something more was going on was when the Council insisted on placing Nihlus, a turian Spectre, with us. As we approached Eden Prime, Captain Anderson let me in on the secret. I was a candidate for the first human Spectre, and Nihlus was really here to evaluate me. We were going to grab some Prothean technology. You do not hide Prothean technology, not unless you want the Council handing you your ass.

Wish someone had told the asari that. Would’ve saved a lot of trouble.

Captain Anderson, of course, I knew from N7. He’s one of the best the Alliance has. Some of the crew questioned why Anderson was on the shakedown run, but this was the SSV Normandy. A joint human-turian project, prototype stealth system, Anderson was the perfect choice for the Normandy’s captain, and why wouldn’t you send the captain on the shakedown? After all, we had the full crew, chosen by Anderson. Not a soul on that ship was there because they were anything less than the best Anderson could imagine. Well, Nihlus, but that was different.

Of course, even retrieving the beacon wasn’t exciting enough. We got to Eden Prime to find it under attack. Nihlus went ahead to scout, while my team came behind. Kaidan Alenko and Richard Jenkins were the ones on my squad. I didn’t know either of them, though Alenko certainly made me smile when he asked about survivors. Thanks to the geth, I never got a chance to know Jenkins. The first loss to the Reapers, though he’d be nowhere near the last.

We met Ashley Williams not long after losing Jenkins. She was the last survivor of her marine squadron, and a hell of a soldier. She joined up with us to continue to explore. This is also when I saw my first geth, and my first husk. The geth, I eventually came to like. Although that’s a long way off.

The beacon wasn’t where Williams left it. She suggested going to the camp, to look for the beacon or, failing that, survivors who might know where the beacon was. We found two, a scientist who was useful and her assistant who, looking back, is the one we REALLY should have paid attention to. The scientist didn’t know jack squat about the beacon. The assistant, well… I think he was starting along the path to indoctrination, now. He also gave us our first warning about Saren.

The beacon had been taken to the spaceport, where we found Nihlus dead and Saren and the geth in force. We beat back the geth, and recovered the beacon while Saren left. Alenko was drawn to the beacon, and in trying to get him away from it, I got hit. I got some kind of… vision. It didn’t make sense at the time.

They say when you’re dying, your life flashes before your eyes. This isn’t flashing. This is dwelling. Maybe, just maybe… I’m not dying.

Alenko was waiting for me when I got out of the med bay. He’d saved my life; I figured the Council could wait five minutes while I made sure he was okay.

Except that the first words out of his mouth were expressing his relief that _I_ was on my feet and able to serve. And trying to give me the credit for saving the colony. “You never get used to seeing dead civilians,” he said. I wonder if he still feels that way now, seeing everything we’ve seen. I’d be more surprised if he didn’t than if he does. Still, I made sure he knew he deserved his fair share of the credit. Turns out he and I have quite a bit in common – his father was in the Navy, we both had biotic abilities, and while we were absolutely loyal Alliance officers and humans, we knew that the other races had a valid point in not wanting to give us too much too fast.

I got stopped by Dr. Chakwas, who told me about one difference between me and Alenko. He was an L2, meaning he was identified and trained way earlier than I was. I hadn’t gotten a chance to read his file yet, but the only thing Chakwas told me that wouldn’t be in there was that Alenko’s side effects were pretty much limited to the occasional migraine. Anderson wouldn’t have chosen him if he didn’t think Alenko’s abilities far outweighed the occasional inability to perform his duty.

We brought Chief Williams with us, as a new member of the Normandy crew. I was very happy when Anderson told me – I’d been impressed with her work on Eden Prime. Now I feel kinda bad about that. If she’d stayed on Eden Prime, gotten another ground assignment…

Anyway, I happened to run into Williams on my way to the bridge. It turns out she had a mild case of survivor’s guilt, feeling like we just brought her because of what happened with Jenkins, and she was pretty torn up about losing her entire unit. Like Alenko, she was bothered by the dead civilians, and tried to give me full credit for the mission. She also had a case of hero worship, thanks to my Star of Terra. I tried to explain that I wasn’t anything special. She wasn’t having it. 

Williams, Alenko, and I went to report to the Council, with Anderson and Ambassador Udina’s help. I took an immediate dislike to Donnel Udina, an instinct that just kept getting proved right, over and over again. He blamed everything on me, railing about me jeopardizing my candidacy for the Spectres.

“Your Spectre candidacy?” Alenko asked once Anderson and Udina were gone. “Is that why Nihlus was really with us?”

“Yeah. They only told me about it right before the mission,” I said. “The man’s an ass, but Udina’s not wrong about this being a terrible start to my trial period.”

“You did everything right,” Williams said, and Alenko agreed. “We have a witness that saw Saren kill Nihlus; if nothing else, they can’t possibly blame you for that one. And that should be enough to cast doubt on everything else.”

“Plus, there’s the geth,” Alenko added. “Nihlus was just as shocked as we were. And you saved the colony. That’s gotta count for something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doing this project made me think about some things. For instance: Shepard's Spectre candidacy was so super secret that Shepard finds out about it at the last possible second, during the briefing for the first trial mission, and then Udina just blurts it out in front of people who didn't know - and Kaidan and Ashley don't even blink?


	3. Long Day on the Citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard meets the Council, several new friends, and Conrad Verner. She also has a very long day.

We had some time before we had to report to the Citadel Tower for our full meeting with the Council, and I’d never been to the Citadel before. As it turns out, neither had either Alenko or Williams, so the three of us agreed to stick together and explore while we waited for Anderson to contact us. We kept hearing about The Consort, and even though I didn’t really have much interest in actually scheduling an appointment with her, I figured we should at least go check the place out.

Apparently, my Star of Terra made me famous. People recognized me pretty much everywhere – at the bar, at the bank, passing in the walkways. A vid producer stopped me once to ask if I’d consider letting him make a vid of Elysium. I told him to take it up with the Alliance brass, but that I wasn’t all that comfortable with it. But the weirdest was when we got to the Consort’s offices. She recognized me and called me in, even without an appointment. She wanted my help.

First time an alien asked for my help. Far, _far,_ from being the last.

I agreed to have a talk, soldier to soldier, with a turian. But before I could head for Chora’s Den, Anderson called. Time to go deal with the Council.

That’s where I met Garrus Vakarian. For some reason, a lot of humans are surprised to learn that my best friend is a turian. He was asking his boss for more time to investigate a lead he had on Saren, but the executor wouldn’t have it. Garrus apologized and wished us luck. Not much of a first meeting, not like with Williams, but it beat Alenko’s. I met him when I reported to the Normandy, and he was the officer on duty to greet me.

To say the meeting with the Council didn’t go well would be like saying the Reapers caused a bit of chaos in the galaxy. They discounted our eyewitness, so without anything solid from C-Sec, of course they’d believe Saren over me. It didn’t help that Anderson was there; he and Saren had a history. Saren screwed Anderson over, and weaseled out of any blame by shifting it all to Anderson.

Anderson suggested checking out an agent of the Shadow Broker, and of course there was following up with Garrus. Finding Garrus meant dealing with Harkin, a C-Sec officer who was an embarrassment to the species. Still is. He and Garrus… never mind that. I went to Barla Von first, because he happened to be closer.

I’m still not sure how I ended up scanning keepers for a science project. I guess I’m just too curious for my own good. That’s what Williams said when I took the scanning device.

Still it makes more sense than me ending up settling a fight between C-Sec and a hanar preacher. That big stupid jellyfish. Getting a permit really wasn’t that big a deal, was it? Thankfully, I was able to convince it to follow the rules.

I wonder what Javik would think of the hanar preacher.

Barla Von pointed us to a krogan, but I wanted to check in with Harkin first. I didn’t know much of anything about the krogan then, while at least with a turian I had some idea what to expect.

Celebrity. It sucks, let me tell you. Reporters and I don’t get along. I’m uncomfortable with the good ones and have no patience for the bad ones. Emily Wong is an exception to the rule. She’s good at her job, and doesn’t try to put me on the spot. I don’t regret helping her out.

So, we were there on business, important investigation, blah blah blah. But we were all newcomers, too. We stopped to look out a window. That’s when I learned Williams had a problem with aliens. It’s also one of the few times Alenko has ever slipped up and not kept things strictly professional when we’re on duty.

Look, when he saluted as I stepped onto the Normandy… I’m not blind. My ears work just fine. Hell yes, I was attracted to Kaidan Alenko. But I was XO on the ship on which he served, and I’d grown up Alliance. So had he, although his dad was retired by the time he had Kaidan. Keeping it professional was not going to be a problem. And look, I know I’m a bit odd-looking. The severe hairstyle doesn’t help the sharp features, and a lifetime on ships means I don’t tan. But Kaidan thought I was beautiful.

Maybe keeping it professional would be a bit harder than I thought.

Everything we’d heard about Chora’s Den made me want to spend as little time there as we could, so when we passed Flux, I was quick to agree with Alenko’s suggestion of grabbing something to eat. It had already been a long day and didn’t look to be ending anytime soon.

Which is how I ended up agreeing to talk our waitress’s sister out of being a C-Sec informant. And I spotted a Keeper, went to scan it, and Alenko noticed a machine making a suspicious noise. Why do I agree to get involved in every little problem I come across?

Oh right. Because I’m Commander Shepard.

It was on the way to Chora’s Den that I first met the mildly annoying thorn in my side. Conrad Verner was a fanboy. All he wanted was an autograph, which, whatever.

Never making _that_ mistake again.

As we finally approached Chora’s Den, we were ambushed by assassins. It seemed we’d upset Saren already. Fine by me. Inside, I convinced the general to straighten out, and he asked me to take a message to one of the people he’d spread his lies to. Williams had quite a few comments about the entertainment, as did Alenko. I was glad to hear them going back and forth like they were. If Alenko could take Williams’ teasing, they’d become good friends. Jenna wasn’t hard to find either, and she was able to point out Harkin while I talked to her. She thought she could handle things, so I left her to it.

Harkin made a bad impression right away, hitting on me in the sleaziest way possible. Things didn’t improve, although afterwards Williams offered a high-five for how I shut him down. He pointed me to Garrus talking to a Dr. Michel. If Harkin’s impression hadn’t been such a bad one, I might have been worried when he said Garrus was a hothead out to save the world.

Let me tell you a couple things about Garrus Vakarian. First: under fire, he’s the calmest person I know. I don’t know when I’ve seen him actually lose his temper. He’s straightforward, and if you’re full of bullshit, he will call you on it to your face. Even if you’re his friend. Hell, _especially_ if you’re his friend. It’s why I always want him on my ship. But if you piss him off, he will take you down. Second: he has high standards of morality and ethics, but he’s still a turian. He’ll look at a situation and recognize the difference between what he wants and what the actual possibilities are. Another reason I want him around. He’s the one who helps me deal with the choices I’ve had to make. Kaidan lets me express my feelings and blow off steam. Garrus talks me through what the options I had were and helps me realize that I’ve either made a mistake or that I did the best I could. Either way, he also points me to the next step. I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without them both.

This is also when I learned that the mission Anderson and Saren had worked together was Anderson’s own Spectre trial, although Harkin didn’t really know the truth. It seems Saren had sabotaged every human candidate for the Spectres.

As we were leaving, I was accosted by a turian. He was Jenna’s C-Sec contact, and he agreed to pull Jenna out if I’d do what she was supposed to. I can’t let an innocent person take risks like that, so I agreed. He wanted me to make an exchange with Jax for illegal mods. That wasn’t bad, so I helped. 

At the med clinic, we found Garrus and Michel under attack. Garrus took a shot while the guy holding Michel hostage was focused on me. At the time, I was pissed, but Garrus’s aim is good enough that he really didn’t need to worry about missing. It would’ve been different if I weren’t distracting the guy, but it worked out. Dr. Michel was the one with the information: a quarian had evidence linking Saren to the geth, and she’d gone to Fist, a Shadow Broker agent. Except that the guy’d betrayed the Shadow Broker to work for Saren. We needed to find her fast.

We arranged a time to meet after I’d gone and talked to Wrex, the krogan merc Barla Von had mentioned. Wrex didn’t exactly make a great impression either. He seemed like a thug, a typical mercenary with no cares beyond his own goals. Still, we could use him, and he had a better shot at Fist with us than on his own.

As we were leaving, I overheard a guy asking for protection from Chorban. That was the guy who’d given me the Keeper scanner, so I went to investigate. His partner was afraid that Chorban was going to kill him, so I agreed to check it out. Turns out, Chorban and Jahleed stole the scanner plans. Chorban just wanted the data that Jahleed stole from him.

At that point I was convinced they were both idiots. So I turned them in.

Fist knew we were coming. He’d closed the bar and hired a bunch of mercs to shoot at us. It wasn’t the first time someone had underestimated me and my team, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. For reference: you don’t have the money it takes to hire enough mercs to take down my squad.

I almost kicked Wrex off the team when he shot Fist. Sure, the guy was scum, but we do things right on my team. But we had to get to the quarian quick, so there wasn’t time to argue. They tried to delay us with mercs, but we were too good. Of course we were.

People think I’m special. They call me a hero. The truth is, I could never have done what I’ve done without my team. Kaidan, Ash, Garrus, Wrex… Kaidan and Garrus became my anchors, my core. But the others are very important to me. There is one thing that makes me lose my shit: you do NOT fuck with my guys. Right down to Fuzzbucket, my space hamster.

We saved the quarian from Fist’s setup. Tali’Zorah nar Rayya. Tali was on her pilgrimage when she came across something she recovered from a geth – a recording of Saren gloating about Eden Prime. She was willing to turn it over to us if we’d protect her.

Given all the crap she’s been through with us, I wonder if Tali feels she got cheated.

If Garrus is my voice of reason, and Kaidan is my soul, then Tali is my heart. She’s an extremely emotional person, and she’s not afraid to speak her mind. Even as a kid on Pilgrimage, she showed a strength of will that I knew would make my team stronger. I wanted her with me, and fortunately, the right people agreed.

While we waited for Anderson to get things set up, I cleared up the remnants of the matter with the Consort. She gave me a gift of words and a weird token thingy. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but what else was I supposed to ask for?

While we were wandering around, we ran into Samesh Bhatia. Williams had served with Bhatia’s wife, and for some reason, the Alliance was holding her body instead of releasing it for cremation. As it turned out, that reason was to study the geth weapons. You don’t learn much from a corpse, though. I saw no reason why they needed every single one.

Schells, a salarian gambler, was just annoying. I took his device to the casino owner, much to the gambler’s disgust. He deserved it. I saw the look Alenko gave me when I took the device, but once he understood the plan, I think he approved.

Alenko reminded me about the signal he’d traced earlier, and we went looking for the source. AI. Okay, now, I’m very pro-AI. Not that anyone will believe that after what I did. But EDI, the geth… at the time, though, all I knew was that the Council treated AI research as second only to withholding Prothean artifacts in crimes against the galaxy. This AI wanted to get a starship and join the geth. It also wanted to kill us. We shut it down.

By now, I was exhausted. Alenko and Williams were a little better off, but not much. Garrus looked like he hadn’t slept for a few days. So I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when Anderson finally contacted us to get to the Council. So now that they couldn’t deny Saren anymore, I kind of shot off my mouth when they started to deny the Reapers. Assholes, all of them.

Some things never change.

Thankfully, the ceremony making me a Spectre was short. It drew the attention of everyone in the tower, and I learned later it was broadcast all over the Citadel, but the Council just made a speech about the awesomeness and responsibility and congratulated me. Then they gave me my assignment: stop Saren.

The first thing out of Williams was a comment about how much Udina sucks. I couldn’t disagree. On the way out, we were stopped by Admiral Kahoku. Now that I was a Spectre, he asked if I could investigate some things for him. The Alliance wasn’t doing anything. I figured it couldn’t hurt, while we waited on leads on Saren.

We headed back to the Normandy. Udina had said he’d meet us there with news and instructions on getting a ship. They gave me the Normandy. I felt really bad for Anderson, but Anderson insisted that it was the right call, that I would need it. He said it was my ship now.

The Normandy, both SR-1 and SR-2, is part of my team. Someone once said that my true love was the Normandy. They weren’t wrong, exactly. Thankfully, Kaidan understands.

My first speech was inspirational, I’m told. To be honest, I don’t really remember what I said. I know I covered stopping Saren and showing what humans could do, but between the exhaustion and the shock, I wasn’t paying attention. All I wanted was to get to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept trying to find a logical place to break this up over at least a couple days, but I couldn't.


	4. Artemis Tau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way to Artemis Tau, Shepard gets to know her crew a little.
> 
> She also learns that thresher maws are hard to kill, Cerberus is a bunch of bastards, and Joker doesn't think there's any time when joking is inappropriate.
> 
> Shepard meets Liara and invites her to join the crew.

We were supposed to be tracking Saren, but with nothing to go on, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. The Alliance had forwarded a few missions to me, and there was Kahoku’s request.

While we were on the way, I took the time to get to know some of my crew. Joker’s tale of being a completely serious ass through flight school somehow rang false, but then again, he was certainly cocky enough. Pressly, my XO, let me know he was having a problem with the three non-humans. On the other hand, he bought my press on Elysium despite having been on the ship that came to rescue us. Somehow, I suspected that Pressly and I were never going to be close. Chakwas, our doctor, on the other hand, I could see becoming a friend. She had just the right blend of compassion and suck-it-up-soldier to work with a military crew.

I found Alenko working on a monitor not far from my quarters. He reassured me once again that he didn’t see how we could have done anything different on Eden Prime.

“So, is there anything on this ship you can’t do?”

“Ma’am?” Alenko looked a little confused by the question.

“You’re a good shot, your biotics are seriously impressive, you copilot with Joker when he needs one, you’re obviously a competent medic… and now you’re also fixing things. So what don’t you do around here?”

Alenko laughed a little. “Oh. You know how it can be for biotics, hard to find work outside of the military. I was a little older than most when I enlisted, spent five years doing odd jobs wherever in the galaxy I could get them. Sometimes, that was minor repairs on a starship in exchange for passage. There was a guy I ran with for about a year who taught me the basics of flying, and of course the Alliance taught me more. When you’re drifting around the galaxy, you learn basic first aid unless you have a death wish – especially if you’re a race so new to the galactic community that sometimes the people you meet haven’t ever seen a human. What I don’t do… honestly, I don’t know. So far no one’s asked me to clean the bathrooms, but I figure that’s just a matter of time. Aside from the biotics, I’m nothing special at any of the things I do, hardly a replacement for a properly trained doctor or engineer and I’d be willing to bet half the ship can out-shoot me. I just like to feel useful, so I help out where I can.” He reached into the monitor to move a wire, jerking back with a shock.

“Sorry for distracting you. We’ll talk another time. I should go.” Even though I wanted to stay and ask for details about drifting around the galaxy, he was working, and I was distracting him.

I went to check on Williams next, make sure she was settling in okay. I tried to reassure her that the geth were good infiltrators, but I had to laugh at her counter. “They have flashlight heads.” I never looked at a geth quite the same way after that. Still, she was doing well, settling in, so I let her keep at it and went to check on my alien friends.

Wrex told me about the genophage. I’d heard that there was bad blood between the krogan and the turians, and salarians for that matter, but I’d never heard anything about why. The salarians created it, the turians deployed it, and the krogan were too invested in fighting as mercenaries to do anything to counteract it. As a result, the krogan were likely to go extinct. I was horrified. Both at the salarians and turians for doing it in the first place, and at the krogan for apparently not giving a fuck about curing it.

“You gonna have a problem working with Garrus?” I had to ask. They’d done all right going against Fist, but there was going to be downtime on this mission. I knew from experience, downtime is when the personal problems become ship problems.

Wrex shook his head. “Unless I find out he was one of the ones who came to our planet and tried to kill us, I’ll work with him. Not like I’ve never worked with turians before. When you’re a merc, you don’t always get the luxury of being picky about who you work with. Or for, sometimes.”

“Good to hear.”

I found Garrus working with the Mako. Oddly enough, he was fixing a wheel. The odd part is that even I could tell that one of the guns was calibrated wrong, and if you know anything about Garrus, it’s that he loves calibrating guns.

Garrus was exciting to be working with a Spectre because we’re free to make our own rules. That concerned me a little. He’d left C-Sec to get away from rules about how to do things, to sign on with a Spectre.

“You know I still consider myself Alliance Navy, right?” I reminded him.

Garrus nodded. “Of course. I spent a few years in the turian military before I left for C-Sec. It’s not military discipline I have a problem with, it’s bureaucratic bullshit. I’m not going to question the chain of command or disobey orders.”

That wasn't my concern, though. “What I’m most worried about is putting civilians in danger. That stunt with Dr. Michel…”

“I understand, Commander. I had faith in my shooting, given that he was distracted. You haven’t really seen me in action. Endangering innocents is not what I’m about.” I'd come to learn the truth of that over time, and it grew even stronger as he and I worked together. I'm just glad he signed on with me instead of with someone who would put the mission ahead of lives.

“Fair enough, then.” I looked across the cargo bay. “Do you have a problem with krogans?”

“Not exactly," Garrus said. "Most krogans I’ve met are the ones who cross paths with C-Sec. As a result, I tend to assume a krogan in front of me is bad-tempered and would just love to kill me. I’m rarely wrong. But it’s not going to be a problem with Wrex. We’ve had a few run-ins and he’s one of the most reasonable krogan I’ve ever met.”

I found Tali in engineering. Adams, my chief engineer, caught my arm to tell me how glad he was she was on board. At first I was worried he was complaining, but Adams didn’t seem to share the general attitude towards quarians I’d noticed. He was genuinely pleased she was here.

Tali herself gushed about the Normandy and how advanced it was. She told me about the Migrant Fleet and how quarians scavenged and repaired and rebuilt what other races would consider long past salvaging. How they send their young adults off on Pilgrimage to bring back resources they can’t produce for themselves.

She also told me about the geth – at least, the quarians’ side of the story. At the time, I didn’t question it, but I’ve learned better. A lot of what she told me about the geth was a little off, too – understandably. The geth changed in 300 years, and we organics are biased toward seeing their platforms as the individuals, instead of thinking of them as programs. Then again, that was changing, thanks to Legion. Of course, it doesn’t matter now. Because of me.

It’s weird to think of how passionately Tali argued that the geth were a mistake and that the quarians were right to go to war.

Anyway, without much to go on, we set course for the Artemis Tau cluster to look for Kahoku’s men. I’m not going to bore you with the details of all the various resource and artifact recovery missions the Council and the Alliance asked me to complete. The asari wanted me to find writings of one of their ancient matriarchs, the salarians and turians relics of old wars, everyone wanted Prothean artifacts, and of course the Alliance wanted me to mark any resources I came across. I did.

Our first excursion was on Sharjila. We’d picked up radio signals coming from the surface. They turned out to be pirates. The leader of this particular band of pirates was an asari, the sister of a prominent asari diplomat.

As we were stripping off our armor, I looked over at Kaidan. “I think I found something you don’t do around here, Lieutenant.”

“What’s that?” Alenko asked, sounding genuinely curious, although slightly wary.

I grinned. “Drive the Mako. Ever again.”

The rest of the team burst into laughter at that. “I didn’t notice you doing any better,” Alenko said. “Ma’am.”

“And I think we all agree that I’m not to be trusted,” Garrus added, and now I was laughing, too. After all, Garrus was the one who’d driven us straight off a cliff.

“Trust me, you don’t want me taking a turn,” Williams added. “You want me on the gun or the rocket launcher where I can do what I’m actually good at. I managed to wreck my parents’ car five times before I enlisted, and I enlisted on my eighteenth birthday.”

“Okay, maybe you’re allowed to drive, Alenko. God, I hope Tali’Zorah can handle this thing. Because I can’t imagine Wrex.”

“You’re going to bring the quarian kid into combat, Commander?” Alenko asked.

“You have a problem with quarians, Lieutenant?” I have to admit, I was a little surprised.

“No, ma’am. Some of the best mechanics I’ve ever known are quarian, and I hear Adams is thrilled to have Tali’Zorah in particular. I’m just not sure about bringing a kid…” Alenko trailed off.

That made a lot more sense. “From what I understand, it’s no different than me or Williams on our first assignments, when we were eighteen. Technically not kids anymore, but it sure doesn’t look like it from up here, does it.”

“Fair enough. You’re right. I sometimes forget that it’s usually kids who enlist,” Alenko said. “But there’s also the quarian tendency toward infection, ma’am. Wrex or me or Garrus get shot, it hurts like hell and we slap some medigel on it. Tali’Zorah could get seriously infected or sick.”

“She’s been shot before,” I pointed out.

Alenko nodded. “Your call, ma’am. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, Lieutenant." This was too important to let go. "If you have concerns about the choices I’m making, I want to hear them. That goes for you too, Williams, Garrus. I’m in command, but I’m only human. Just be prepared to back up your concerns. Like Alenko did with the infection.”

The next system had nothing of particular interest, so we moved on to Edolas. And this is where I first began to interact with Cerberus. As we approached, Joker let me know about a distress signal, and I had a feeling we’d found Kahoku’s men.

We had. All dead, thanks to a thresher maw. The same thresher maw that was trying to kill us. I’d heard the stories about them. Tali was driving, so Garrus took the rocket launcher and I manned the gun. We managed to bring the giant worm down, but Alenko looked rather shaken.

“You okay, Lieutenant?”

Alenko snapped to with a salute. “Yes, ma’am. Old memories, that’s all. I’m fine.”

I let it go then, but once we got back to the ship, I tracked him down. “Have you dealt with thresher maws before, Alenko?”

Alenko flinched. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard the story, ma’am. About a year back, my unit and I were on Akuze. A thresher maw attacked, and… and I’m the only one who made it out.”

“I’m sorry.” I had heard the story. I just hadn’t heard there was a survivor. “If I’d known…”

Kaidan cut me off. “About Akuze, or about the thresher maw down there? You couldn’t have known about the latter. Don’t worry about me. I got good psychiatric help when I got back. I’ve dealt with the survivor’s guilt, and maybe there’s a little lingering PTSD, but I could have taken the gun or the rockets if you thought that’s what was best for the mission. I’d say drive, but…”

“Tali did a good job keeping us out of the acid, but she’s no better at the straight-up driving than any of us. That just leaves Wrex to potentially keep you out on a permanent basis.”

Alenko chuckled. “Thanks. And, for the record, it wasn’t the thresher maw that caused me to zone like that. It was the dead squad in Alliance uniforms surrounding a thresher maw. Hard not to see my friends from Akuze.”

“Fair enough.”

But the most interesting part of Artemis Tau came when we went to Therum.

We landed because Joker had picked up some strange readings that were extremely powerful. Wrex got to drive, which was a mistake, and I had Alenko take over after the second time Wrex accidentally got us into the lava. He wasn’t happy about that, until I told him to take the rocket launcher when we ran into geth.

This is probably when I started earning my reputation as crazy. We got close to the dig site the signal was coming from, but the path was blocked by rocks. We’d had to fight our way through armatures pretty much every time we turned around. And yet, I still said to leave the Mako and go on foot.

There was an armature. We fought it. On foot. Me, Kaidan, and Garrus. The three of us would eventually become an incredibly hard to stop unit. It didn’t seem to matter who else was with us; this time it was Wrex. It made things a little different, because the krogan fought like a krogan, not a quarian or a human, so I didn’t have to be the crazy one charging in headfirst while Kaidan threw biotic blasts and Garrus picked off targets. Maybe that’s why Kaidan liked having Wrex around so much, now that I have the time to think about it.

At the dig site, we met Liara T’Soni. I don’t know how to even begin to describe my relationship with her. We’re friends, definitely. I don’t think of her as a sister like I do Tali or Garrus, because it feels too weird. Especially if she did what I think she did, just before… before I ended up here. I don’t know what I’d have done without her, but at the same time, spending too much time with her tended to end up feeling a little awkward.

But right then, Liara was trapped in a Prothean energy field. She’d activated defenses against the geth, but accidentally trapped herself. We had to use a mining laser to cut through the barrier.

“Thank you," she said as she righted herself after dropping out of the field. "I’m Dr. Liara T’Soni. I study the Protheans. I thought I could use their device, but I guess I still have a lot to learn.”

“Well, you’re out now. Can you help us?" I asked. "We’re tracking down a rogue Spectre, and one of his associates is an asari matriarch. Benezia.”

Liara got a little pale. “Benezia? Benezia is my mother. I haven’t spoken to her in several months. She said she had an important mission, and she didn’t want me to know too much because I would worry. Is that… is that why you’re here? Because you think I can lead you to her?”

Well that was a surprise, and one hell of a coincidence. “I didn’t even know you were here, let alone related. We were in the system and noticed the energy spike.” The room shook a little. “What was that?”

“These ruins are somewhat unstable, and this planet high in seismic activity. That mining laser must have triggered a quake.”

Liara got us out of there, and we saved her from the krogan and the geth. Fair trade. Liara was a bit surprised about Joker being himself, explaining to me that volcanos and the Normandy weren’t a good mix. She learned. She told us that her work indicated that contrary to popular belief, the Protheans weren’t the first, just the most recent culture to go extinct mysteriously. Which… she sure wasn’t wrong about. Kaidan brought us back to the real topic at hand: Saren, Benezia, and the geth. Liara didn’t know anything about that, but agreed that it was in all of our best interests for her to stay on the Normandy.

She nearly fainted then, and Kaidan got her to sick bay while I reported to the Council. It went about as well as any meeting with the Council ever has. Back then, I wasn’t as disgusted with politicians as I eventually came to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All Mako exploits, in this chapter and in future chapters, are things that actually happened in-game, and I just assigned to a driver as I felt appropriate.
> 
> I love that thing SO MUCH.
> 
> Also, yes, I made Kaidan the survivor of Akuze. Why not? It fits with some of the character themes for him, especially his strong feelings about Cerberus. (No, Ash is not going to be the Butcher of Torfan.)
> 
> I know that in canon, Shepard gets told about Liara as she's headed out, but I needed a reason to explain why Shepard's spending time doing things not Saren or geth-related, and "because we're looking for leads" was as good as any.


	5. Hawking Eta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard deals with a biotic cult as she gets to know her crew.

Once again, we found ourselves somewhat directionless waiting on a geth sighting or some other clue about Saren’s plans or whereabouts. Admiral Hackett called with a tip on something weird happening out in Hawking Eta, so we headed out that way.

Once we were underway, I went to check on Liara. She’d had a rough day, but rest and Dr. Chakwas had her feeling much better. This is when I first learned of the asari mind-meld thing. I’d heard a lot of the rumors about the asari, but the chance to hear it from an actual asari was supposed to clarify things. It didn’t, really.

Over dinner, we all got to know each other a little better. Garrus told us about how he came to join C-Sec. It sounded pretty much like how I ended up being Alliance Navy – the need to serve and to live up to parents. Wrex told us about the merc job he’d worked for Saren a couple years back. Tali told us about life on the flotilla, and how she kind of felt weird on such a quiet ship where silence didn’t equal danger.

After dinner, Ashley hung back a little. She was concerned about the aliens having full access to the ship. I couldn’t blame her, but if they were gonna be part of our squad, then I needed to show I trusted them. This led into a discussion of her issues with aliens. Which, again, I could understand, even if I didn’t agree.

If I die here, I’m going to find Ashley in the afterlife and give her hell for her comment about kissing turians. It’s not as weird as you’d think, given they don’t really have lips.

Alenko caught me as I was on my way to my quarters. He wanted to know what was wrong with the Council, why they wouldn’t at least want this thoroughly investigated. I wanted to know that, too. Somehow that led to him telling me about Brain Camp.

“You know, I’ve been wondering, Commander. You’re pretty close to my age, I’ve seen your biotics in the field. You’re a military brat. How did you not end up at Brain Camp with us?”

“My biotics didn’t manifest until I was seventeen. By then, they’d closed BAaT down. Otherwise I’m sure I’d have been haul… wait, no, how'd you put it, ‘encouraged to report for voluntary investigation of my abilities,’ given that a few weeks before I first showed abilities, I got exposed to eezo dust. Inhaled it. Mom swears up and down that she was extremely careful when she was pregnant, avoided eezo as much as she could get away with. Hell, I’m surprised they didn’t bring me in anyway.”

“That… wow, I’m glad it worked out so well for you,” Alenko said, somewhat in shock. “Not many people survive eezo dust inhalation.”

Alenko surprised me when I commented on the obvious result of putting a bunch of teenagers on a station with little to do. There was a girl he admired greatly, but he kept his clothes on, because he didn’t do that sort of thing lightly. She was beautiful, rich, charming, but grounded. “Like you, I guess. Ma’am.” I wasn’t sure if he was flirting or trying to kiss up, given that of the qualities he’d described, the only one I’d say applied to me was grounded.

As I was leaving, Kaidan stopped me with a question. “Do you make a habit of getting this personal with everyone, ma’am?”

I smiled. Couldn’t help it. “No. No, I don’t. But we should do this again sometime.”

Kaidan’s always been a fairly by-the-book kind of guy. It’s one of the things I love about him. To this day, I still don’t know if he’d meant to actually flirt, but I’m thinking not. He was so shocked by me making it that obvious that I was. “Wow. I… I need some time to process this, ma’am. But I think I’d like that.”

“Hey, while you’re here…” This time it was Alenko’s turn to stop and look back. “What’s your opinion of our newest squad member?” I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d seen some tenseness back in the briefing, which I hadn’t expected from him.

“Dr. T’Soni? She seems nice enough, if you like the bookish sort.” Alenko gave a half-shrug. To this day I have no idea what possessed me to ask if he did.

If I live through this, I’m going to give him hell about his preference for adventurous women.

Somehow, even with us Alliance folk having duty shifts and the aliens having their own work to be doing, we ended up having dinner together almost every night. Sometimes Ash would have to be at her station, or Liara would get too interested in her research, or something like that. Sometimes we could get others to join us – Chakwas, or Adams. Joker actually fairly frequently. We even got Pressly to join us a couple times, despite the aliens.

Once we got to Hawking Eta, Admiral Hackett called with more details. We were investigating a former Alliance officer who had formed a sort of biotic cult. Two Alliance scouts had been sent out already, but were believed to have been killed.

So, as Liara drove us around – she couldn’t be any worse than Wrex, right? – naturally the first thing we run into is another damn thresher maw. As usual, I got on the gun and Garrus on the rockets. Liara was terrified, and eventually Alenko pulled her out of the way and took over driving.

Major Kyle turned out to be somewhat certifiable. He really believed that without him, the biotic cult would literally die. I had to point out that if he didn’t come with me, they would literally die to bullets for the crime of killing Alliance soldiers. He asked for time to explain it to his followers, and I agreed. I figured he’d either kill himself, kill all of them, turn himself in, or make the Alliance kill them all. And I think he realized that turning himself in was best for both him and his “children”.

Back then, a lot of people considered me naïve. Or possibly just stupid. Because I believed that I could save people. Because I believed that, given the chance, people would do the right thing. Because I trusted that a broken Alliance soldier still cared about the people under his command.

“So, I suggest not letting me drive again,” Liara said as we put up our gear.

Garrus laughed. “You did fine, Liara. I suggest we not throw the scientist into combat against a thresher maw and expect a soldier’s poise.”

“Kaidan had to take over for me,” Liara protested.

“And he doesn’t drive any better than you do,” Garrus said. “He just has fought tough beasts before.”

Kaidan chuckled. “First time either of them got in the Mako with me, they banned me from driving again. So far, I think the only person who hasn’t been banned from driving is Tali. Don’t worry about it, Liara. You’ll get better.”

“So, a biotic cult,” I said. “You ever tempted to join one of those, Kaidan?”

“Nah. I’ve kinda done the ‘isolate myself with only other biotics around’ thing once, I don’t think it’s doing human biotics any favors,” Kaidan said. “For training, yes, you need to be around others. But establishing a separate school just for them where they never interact with non-biotics just reinforces the idea that we’re best kept separated from others. Grissom Academy has it right, I think. They have a program for gifted biotics, but they have their non-biotic-specific classes with people who are there because they’re scientific geniuses or brilliant with tech or something else. I’ll bet very few people leave Grissom Academy thinking of biotics as freaks.”

“Among the asari, all children are trained in basic biotics,” Liara said. “Even those who have no talent for it themselves, rare though they are among our kind. Perhaps your schools could do the same.”

“The asari have also had biotic talents since the dawn of time,” Garrus observed. “It’s been what, one generation for humans?”

“Something like that. It’ll take some time to get used to, and of course there’s the very human fear of some people being able to do things that most can’t. Conatix really played that up to convince parents to send their kids to training, so it’s still very fresh in the public consciousness.” Kaidan paused for a moment. “Commander, permission to report to Chakwas?”

“Go on. I need to go report in to Hackett anyway.”

Hackett was pleased to hear the results of our investigation, and promised to get a team out there as quickly as he could. I went to check in on Kaidan. “Hey.”

“Don’t worry, Commander. I’m sure you’ve seen in my file that I use the old L2 implants,” Kaidan said forcing a smile.

“I did, and Chakwas assured me that the occasional migraine is the worst of it, for you. Kinda figured that’s what this was about.”

“I should be fit for duty next time you need me. Most of the time, I can push through the pain, although occasionally they do get too bad for that. May rely a little more on my pistol and less on throwing opponents around, but I can do my job.”

“If you couldn’t, Anderson would never have brought you to the Normandy. If the L2 was going to be a problem, I’d have said something a long time ago. I’ve heard the stories, but if Anderson and Chakwas say you’re good, then that’s good enough for me.”

“Thanks, Commander,” Kaidan said, relaxing a little. I took off to let him get some sleep.


	6. Hades Gamma and Return to the Citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard encounters biotic cult #2, the worst ambush of her life, Admiral Mikhailovich, Conrad Verner, and Garrus's strange sense of humor.
> 
> Oh, and another thresher maw.

With no leads yet on Saren, we headed out to Hades Gamma. There was a survey team missing that Admiral Hackett passed on to us. We made Williams drive, because she was the only one who hadn’t taken a turn at the helm yet. She wasn’t any better than the rest of us, but she wasn’t as bad as she’d made herself out to be.

We found and disabled a tower that was messing with communications in the area. Whether it was ExoGeni or the people who’d done this to them, it was hard to say. We found the ExoGeni camp abandoned, but a search of the site revealed an excavation site to the north, where they’d found some kind of alien technology. Husk-making technology, it would seem, because that’s all we found there.

Oh. Except yet another goddamn thresher maw.

As I was reporting in to Hackett, he interrupted me. Apparently we had another group of crazy biotics, the kind that take senators hostage to demand reparations. It’s not that I didn’t feel for the L2s, but I hate terrorists.

“You okay with this, Alenko?” Garrus asked as we suited back up.

“What, you think that because I’m an L2 I’m going to betray the Alliance and Commander Shepard to join some terrorist group? I agree with their cause, but their methods are all wrong, Garrus. I wouldn’t take the reparations, because I don’t consider myself disabled by it, but a lot of L2s can’t be productive members of society because their side effects are so bad.”

“Good to hear,” Garrus said. “About you, I mean. Not about the disabled biotics.”

The mission itself was straightforward enough. Shoot our way through terrorists too stupid to negotiate, and then talk down the leaders. I know I have a reputation as having no respect for authority. I respect authority just fine. Ask Hackett. Or Anderson. What I don’t respect are idiots with fancy titles. Chairman Burns had looked at the reparations request, read the letters and testimony of L2s, and said it wasn’t that bad and they didn’t deserve anything. But now, seeing the L2s, his eyes were opened. If he’d done his damn job right, I wouldn’t have had to talk down terrorists with hostages.

We decided to head back to the Citadel. We could spin our wheels there just as well as out here. Dinner that night was a loud affair. Wrex told us about Tuchanka and how he ended up being a mercenary instead of helping his people. His father betrayed him and tried to kill him when he tried to help the krogan. He also told us about the battle armor taken from him, and I promised to help him find it. Garrus told us about a salarian scientist he’d once hunted and let slip away. He was growing body parts inside people and then harvesting them to sell on the black market. Thank god most of us were through eating by then. I can’t imagine anything bad enough to put Wrex off his appetite. Garrus knew where to find him, but couldn’t find anyone to actually go look. I figured if we didn’t get any leads on the Citadel, it couldn’t hurt to go ourselves. Tali talked about her Pilgrimage and how she felt the pressure of being an admiral’s daughter. I saw a bunch of heads nodding at that one. Ashley told us about her family. Three younger sisters, an Alliance dad, and a military wife mom.

“Oh, and Abby… watch out for her, LT. She thinks you’re cute.” Ashley smirked.

Kaidan chuckled a little in disbelief. “Me. Yeah, not likely. Where’s she been seeing me anyway?”

“Apparently you got included in some vid about Commander Shepard, the First Human Spectre. Maybe they just hired a really good-looking actor to play you?” Ashley said with an unconcerned shrug.

“I can’t imagine why they would. I mean why would they include me in the vid at all?” Kaidan asked.

Garrus tried to hide his amusement. “Come on, Kaidan. Every superhero needs a sidekick to prop them up and make them look good – that’s me – and a special friend to keep them fighting when everything goes dark. That’s you.”

Kaidan was starting to look really uncomfortable now. “Wha… no, it’s not!”

I took pity on Kaidan then and stopped Garrus before he could push it even farther. “The truth doesn’t matter. You’re human, male, and part of my team. Good enough for the people who are making those vids.”

“Although if you’d prefer they use Ashley for the role…” Garrus offered.

“No! No, I don’t… you are all horrible people. Except you, Commander. Thank you for the support,” Kaidan said.

“What did I do?” Tali asked, hurt.

Kaidan sighed. “Okay. Tali, Wrex, you’re not horrible people. Only Garrus and Ash. Sorry, Tali.”

“What’s your father doing now, Ashley?” Subject change time. It ended up leading into a discussion of matters of faith. Turns out we have a mixed bunch, from a devout Christian to a turian whose only use for religion is for swearing.

Liara hadn’t shown up for dinner, so as the group dispersed, I took her some food. She told me a little about her work, and managed to try to eat her foot instead of her dinner. “Interesting specimen for in-depth study” was my favorite.

If I live through this, I’ll have to ask if she still wants to dissect me in a lab somewhere. Maybe just have Miranda send over whatever notes she still has?

Once again, Kaidan caught me as I was heading in to bed. I wasn’t quite sure whether to be flattered or creeped out by how much time he apparently spent hanging out by my quarters. He wanted to tell me that he thought I was doing a good job, but that he was worried that the lack of oversight we had might lead to cutting corners, doing things the wrong way or for the wrong reasons. He told me about his Brain Camp instructor, Vyrrnus, who sounded like a real ass. He’d dealt with it, just like he’d dealt with Akuze, and I believed him. But he wanted to make sure I understood that actions have consequences that no one can foresee, so you need to be careful.

Something else to ask him about. Whether he thinks I ever did fall into that trap. He’ll probably try to avoid answering, because we both know that I did. But neither of us likes talking about that time.

He also mentioned that the rumor was that Liara had a thing for me. And he offered to back off, to let me have what limited personal time I could take with her, if that’s what I wanted. I reassured him that it was _not_.

Just as we were pulling into the Citadel, Hackett called. We had a rogue VI. On Luna, of all places. And Hackett thought that a Spectre was just the thing to solve that problem. I told him we’d be there as soon as we could, but that we needed to resupply and do some routine maintenance on the Normandy. It wouldn’t take more than a day.

I could tell the stop at the Citadel would be trouble when we ran into Rear Admiral Mikhailovich waiting outside the airlock. He seemed like the kind of annoying commander I hated – develop opinion first, look at facts later if ever. He pretty much proved me right. He hated the Normandy. I defended her, of course.

“Good to see our races do have some things in common, Commander,” Garrus said as the admiral walked away.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“We both have overpromoted bureaucratic assholes who think they know everything because someone slapped some rank on them,” Garrus said.

Kaidan cracked a grin. “I thought I was going to die when he started yelling at you for having non-humans aboard. With them standing _right here_.”

And then, the worst ambush I’ve ever walked into. Her name is Khalisah bint-Sinan al-Jilani. Do not speak to this woman if you can possibly avoid it. Her journalistic integrity is right there beside the Illusive Man’s sanity and your average krogan’s desire for peace. At the time, I didn’t know that. I didn’t like the tone of her questions, but I did my best to retain my professionalism.

She didn’t. I should’ve punched her.

Continuing the tour of people I didn’t particularly want to see, Conrad Verner was waiting for me in the markets. This time, he wanted a picture with me. I still didn’t see the harm, though I never have liked the publicity that comes with being marketed as a hero.

“You know, I’m not sure his wife will be as thrilled as he’s expecting,” Ashley observed as Conrad walked away.

I rolled my eyes. “What, her husband suddenly developing some obsessive tendencies over another woman?”

“Exactly. Maybe you shouldn’t be encouraging him,” Ashley said.

“Encouraging him? Seriously? I’m not… I wouldn’t…”

“I’m just saying, maybe you’re being a little too nice to him. He’s kind of starting to become a creeper,” Ashley said.

Starting to? I laughed. “I’ll take it under advisement. Any other thoughts on my fanboy?”

No one else had any, so we got what supplies we needed. Garrus wanted to go check on Dr. Michel, and we had some time, so we figured why the hell not. She’d managed to land herself in trouble again, getting blackmailed over medical supplies. We scared off the krogan threatening her, but he was just a middleman. Anderson didn’t know anything helpful about the man we were really looking for, but he thought Kahoku might.

We needed to talk to Kahoku anyway, to tell him about his scout team. Along the way, I spotted Nassana Dantius, and let her know about her sister’s death. Her reaction… wasn’t what I expected. Of course, I knew very little about her, then.

Emily Wong caught up to me then. Thanks to Khalisah, I nearly snapped at her, but then I remembered her integrity, and space traffic was a serious problem. So I agreed to plant her bug.

Then it was time to ship out for the moon. Apparently I didn’t screw up the interview too bad, because Hackett called to tell me I did fine. Kahoku called to tell me who killed his men: Cerberus. Alliance black ops organization that went rogue. I’ve done a lot of things I’m proud of. Some of them I should be. Burning Cerberus to the ground? That felt way better than it should have.


	7. Noveria and Finding Kahoku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes to check out Cerberus, but gets distracted by her real job. A lead pops up on Noveria and she goes to meet Liara's mother.

On Luna, we let Garrus drive so that the three humans could stare at the scenery unless Ash and I were needed on the weapons. Garrus has many admirable qualities. Driving in a way that doesn’t make us all queasy is not one of them. Still, taking out the turrets was easy enough.

I know it had to be done, but knowing what I do now, I feel bad about the way I handled that rogue VI. Fortunately, she’s forgiven me for it, agreeing that I didn't have any other choice.

I wanted to go investigate Kahoku’s tip on Cerberus, but we FINALLY got a lead on Saren and what he was up to. Tevos contacted me to say that her people had gotten word of Matriarch Benezia visiting Noveria, a planet where businesses set up research operations that they couldn’t do in more civilized areas. Since hunting Saren was my actual job, while helping the Alliance is what I did while waiting for leads, Benezia took priority.

“Hey, Liara,” I said as I walked into her research room.

“Commander! What can I do for you?”

“We’re going to Noveria. Word is, your mother’s here. I’d like you to come with us, but if you feel that you’d have a conflict of interest…” I figured I should make the offer, no matter how much I wanted her expertise along.

Liara surprised me, though. “No. Benezia is working with Saren. I don’t understand it, but mother or no, she must be stopped. I’d like to come.”

When we got to Noveria, security was incredibly hostile to us. They wanted to take our weapons. I considered it. Kaidan, Liara, Wrex, and I all had biotics, Tali has her combat drone, but Garrus and Ashley would be stuck. Besides, if I tried, Garrus might have pointed his rifle at me. Fortunately, before things got too tense, Gianna Parisini called down and told security to back off.

Parisini pointed us in the direction of Peak 15, but of course, there were bureaucratic hoops to jump through. We needed a garage pass, and getting it was going to be difficult. I considered taking a hanar up on his request for me to smuggle a package and then taking it to Anoleis, but then I met Anoleis. He is everything that’s wrong with bureaucrats. Besides, Wrex took it upon himself to help a fellow krogan out. Which… I gave him the slap on the wrist for going behind my back, but everyone knew I didn’t really care this time.

Parisini sent me to the bar to talk to Lorik Qui’in. He had a garage pass to get me out, but I’d have to help him first. Fine by me. He wanted me to break into his office and get the evidence of Anoleis’s corruption before the security team did. I didn’t want to fight the security guards, but I couldn’t find the director to warn her what her people were doing. I disabled the security alarms and talked the first couple guards into leaving, but when someone shoots me, I shoot back. Matsuo was pissed, but agreed that I made the right choice.

What is it about being a Spectre that makes people think I’m willing to just break laws on a whim? I was approached to help out with some espionage. No, thank you.

Of course, then I got embroiled in corporate backstabbing anyway. Parisini was an undercover agent looking to take down Anoleis. I had evidence, and if I could get Qui’in to testify, Anoleis would go down. Qui’in wasn’t happy about the arrangement, but Garrus and I managed to talk him into it. Parisini gave me her garage pass, but suggested we wait till morning to go.

It was pretty late, and the blizzard couldn’t get any worse, so I agreed. In the morning, we went to get vehicles. Of course they were Makos. And what’s more, guarded by geth. Kaidan’s theory was that they were in the crates Benezia brought, which meant we could probably expect more.

“See, Liara? Told you you’d get better at driving,” I teased as we headed into Peak 15. The power was off. We went looking for the main interface, but first, we found more geth – and then, rachni. I was very glad to have some aliens with us to tell us about the rachni. Wrex promised a story next time we had dinner. Once we got through the rachni, we were able to start restoring power. Rebooting the station VI was a pain in the ass, but we got it done. There were geth swarming the reactor, but we took care of them. The landlines were easy to repair, too.

We took the tram over and found the survivors huddled behind what was left of security. Benezia had gone to the hot labs. I wanted to check around, to make sure that things were okay at the outpost. They weren’t. There was a bioweapon being developed and the antidote was quarantined. Along the way, we ran into Han Olar, who told us what had happened in the hot labs. We made the cure, but were attacked by an asari commando who’d posed as a scientist. We took her out.

Han Olar pointed us to maintenance, where the geth who helped the asari had come from. To get in, we needed a key. The guy I mixed the cure for just happened to have one. He was grateful enough to give it to me so I could get to the hot labs the back way.

Benezia didn’t feel like talking, much. Instead, she told her commandos to kill us. She didn’t seem to mind the idea of killing her own daughter. That was a little weird. Of course, it was all explained when we defeated the commandos and Benezia was able to take control of her mind for a short time. She’d been indoctrinated by Saren. Well, by Sovereign, as it turned out, but she didn’t realize that. She gave us the coordinates to the Mu Relay, which is where Saren would be heading as soon as he finished whatever else he needed to do.

Benezia died. We couldn’t save her, and she didn’t want us to try. That just left the rachni. If I killed the queen, it was genocide. If I let her go and she didn’t keep her word to me, I had unleashed the worst threat the galaxy had ever seen back into the wild. Humans weren’t in space during the Rachni Wars. I felt extremely ill-prepared to be the one having to decide, but I decided to trust her. She begged me to kill her children, saying their minds were irrevocably warped by fear and loneliness. I agreed, reluctantly.

Sparatus started giving me hell about the rachni. Oddly, the Normandy seemed to hit a dead patch in space and we lost the connection. I’d just had to make the hardest decision of my life, and he wanted to berate me for it.

They didn’t call me right back to say “Oh by the way we have something useful to tell you”, so I followed up on Admiral Kahoku’s tip about Cerberus. On the way out, Garrus seemed to be a little on edge. I’m always glad to have him around, but he can be a bit paranoid sometimes – he thought the Council might be protecting Saren, or would let him go. He suggested killing Saren when we found him instead of bringing him in for trial. It was tempting, but that’s not what I stand for, and I let him know that.

At dinner, Wrex lived up to his promise and told us the story of how the salarians uplifted the krogan to deal with the rachni in the Rachni Wars. How the krogan then hunted the rachni to extinction. Garrus stepped in to tell the story of the Krogan Rebellions, ending with the genophage – which Garrus seemed to think was overkill. He understood the logic, but thought it was just a little too far.

Ashley then mentioned the irony of a human making the kind of decision I had to on Armistice Day, the day the First Contact War with the turians ended. Williams is a common enough name, I hadn’t realized she was the granddaughter of General Charles Williams. Suddenly, her service record… well, “made sense” is wrong, because Ash was a hell of a soldier and didn’t deserve the crap assignments. I’m glad Anderson brought her to the Normandy. She belonged there.

Nobody was surprised Liara hadn’t shown up for dinner, but when I went to talk to her, she said she was okay with Benezia’s death. She’d mentioned something about asari taking a philosophical approach to those they love dying so much before them. I suppose this is an example of that. We talked about the differences between asari and humans, and then things got awkward. Liara admitted she found me compelling, and that she was intrigued by me. I hadn’t meant to, but somehow, I’d given her the idea that I was attracted to her as well. I let her know she was wrong.

Couldn’t say I was the least surprised to find Kaidan hanging out near my quarters. Yeah, okay, they’re just off the mess and the one place on the ship people really had to just relax. I have to admit, I was disappointed to find he was backing off a little. He wanted to vent about how frustrated he was with the other races for burying their heads in the sand on the Reaper issues. I didn’t disagree one bit, and joked that it was human nature. He told me the end of the story with Vyrrnus, how he’d gone too far and accidentally killed Vyrrnus for hurting his friend. How that taught him that aliens are just like us in the most important ways. There are jerks and saints in every race. I pointed out how that made him who he is today, so concerned with doing the right thing, of never loosening up or letting go. He protested a bit until I reassured him that I didn’t think any less of him for being who he is now that I knew the reason. Hell, if anything, I think this conversation is probably the one where I started actually falling in love, instead of just being attracted to him.

Of course, as soon as we hit the Voyager Cluster, we had a change of plans. Admiral Hackett called – a bomb from the First Contact war had found its way there, and Hackett needed someone to go disable it without calling attention to it. I tried to protest that I didn’t have trained bomb people, but he was more concerned about stealth.

“So that’s the situation, guys. Anyone know anything that might be remotely related to bombs?” I asked.

“Well, uh… I’m not saying I’m bomb squad replacement, but I’ve been in a couple situations where we needed a bomb defused, like on Eden Prime when Saren tried to blow the colony,” Kaidan said, looking a little embarrassed.

“I should’ve known. Of course you have.” I couldn’t help the laughter, though. “Anyone else?”

“A few years back someone planted a bomb on the Rayya,” Tali said. “Some places strongly object to the Migrant Fleet coming anywhere near them. After the ship was saved, most captains made basic bomb training mandatory.”

“All right, Tali, you’re in. Ash? Garrus? Wrex?”

“Sorry, skipper. Ground assignments lead to a lack of excitement,” Ashley said.

“Bombs are for mercs who can’t shoot well enough to handle their problems with guns,” Wrex said.

“ _Very _basic bomb-squad training during school. It’s a turian thing,” Garrus said.__

__That made team selection easy. It was pretty well accepted by this point that my team was Kaidan, Garrus, and a mission specialist. This time, we ran into a turian named Elanos Haliat. He assumed I’d know it. I didn’t. He’s the reason I got catapulted to hero status. The one who coordinated the Skyllian Blitz. The one who trapped me in this mining shaft with a fusion bomb._ _

__Luckily, my team was either being modest about their skills, or whoever built that bomb wasn’t very good. We had it disabled in minutes. Dumbass didn’t know there was another way out of the mine, so collapsing the entrance didn’t bother us long. They’d even kindly brought the Mako to where we came out. Naturally, we killed them all._ _

__We finally made it to Binthu the next day. We hit the first lab, and were not prepared for what we saw._ _

__“Why are there rachni?” Ashley was the one to ask, but all of us were thinking it._ _

__We found rachni at the next base, too. This time it was Garrus who asked what we were all thinking. “Saren used ExoGeni to breed rachni soldiers. Is Cerberus somehow affiliated with them too, or are they working for Saren?”_ _

__“No way to know with what we’ve got,” Kaidan said. “Maybe the admiral will be able to dig up something.”_ _

__That hope came crashing down at the third site. Kahoku’s body was there, along with some weird creatures. The creatures hadn’t killed him, though. Needles had. Well, injections. That sucked._ _

__The main Cerberus base, naturally, was a system away._ _

__“Nice driving, Kaidan, I think you broke the wheel,” Garrus said as he leaned out of the Mako. I looked out and, sure enough, one of the wheels was bent._ _

__“We’ve got five more, we’ll get there fine,” Kaidan said. “But if you think you can do better, be my guest. The mountains here are steep!”_ _

__The mountains were, indeed, steep. I was going a little fast, maybe, fine. But I will never live this one down._ _

__“Shepard! Are you _crazy_?” Kaidan asked as we went flying._ _

__So, okay, yes, I _had_ just driven the Mako off a cliff, to fall hundreds of feet, landing smack in the middle of some Cerberus people. Actually, I’m pretty sure we landed _on_ one of them. “No! Just eager for payback!” We took out the Cerberus bastards, and salvaged what data we could from the base computers before they wiped themselves. When we got back, I was contacted by an agent of the Shadow Broker. He wanted the data. I didn’t want to give it to him._ _

__Kaidan caught me on my way to dinner. “Hey. Got a moment?”_ _

__“Sure, what’s on your mind?”_ _

__“That stunt you pulled at the Cerberus base. Even for you, that was reckless, and while I’m willing to give the terrain some credit, you had plenty of warning of what the terrain was like by then,” Kaidan said. “I’m worried about you. Is everything okay?”_ _

__“It’s Kahoku,” I admitted. “I’m pissed at Cerberus for killing a good admiral, I’m pissed at Kahoku for agreeing to treason to get the location of the Cerberus base, and I’m pissed at myself. If we’d gone straight there, maybe we could have saved him.”_ _

__“We couldn’t have gone straight there, Shepard. I wish we could have saved him, too, but Saren has to be our priority. If we’d come here and then gone to Noveria, we probably would have missed Benezia, and our actual lead. You made the right call.” I knew that, and I'd been telling myself that since we found the body. It helped a bit to hear it from someone else, someone I respected that much._ _

__“I know.” I let out a long breath. “And we had no way of knowing that the bomb was a trap specifically for me because of Elysium. It’s just… I feel bad that we couldn’t save him.”_ _

__“You want to save everyone, and that’s something I admire about you. But we’re soldiers, Shepard. You know we’re not going to be able to. That sometimes, you’ll have to choose who to save.”_ _

__“They can’t all be like Elysium where the cavalry shows up at just the right moment, eh?” I had to laugh a little. “I know that. I’ve got Tali working on decrypting those files from Cerberus, though. I doubt we blew up the last of them. And hey, I’m a Spectre. Taking down rogue organizations is part of the job, and send a human to clean up a human mess, right?”_ _

__Kaidan chuckled. “Something like that, yeah. Just don’t forget that our priority has to be Saren, and that we can’t take down Cerberus if we die because of bad driving in the Mako. You know, if we stop Saren, especially if we can get the Council behind us to acknowledge the real threat of the Reapers? You’ll have done a hell of a thing for the Alliance. You might get another Star of Terra out of this.”_ _

__“God, I hope not. Do you know how many people have two of those?”_ _

__“Not very many. There aren’t just a whole lot of people like you, Shepard.”_ _

__“You either. The life you had hasn’t been easy, but I can’t imagine a better person to have at my side.”_ _

__“Shepard, I… I know we can’t follow through now. We’ve got a mission and that needs to be our focus. But when we get some time, I really do want to see this through. And I just wanted you to know that I’m serious here.”_ _

__“Same here. One more reason that the sooner Saren goes down, the better.”_ _


	8. Kepler Verge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan meets an old friend. Garrus meets an old foe. Wrex finds some old junk.

Wrex’s stories were getting to be the best part of dinner. This time, he told us about the time he was hired to take out an old friend for a volus diplomat, who turned out to be an old friend of Wrex’s as well. They fought for days, but in the end, she escaped and Wrex got a cushy job as a bodyguard.

On Noveria, Ashley had been poking around the extranet, and came across a report of a doctor being threatened in the Kepler Verge. That was also the last known location of Dr. Heart, the guy Garrus was looking for. When we got out there, Hackett called to tell me that scientists had gone missing, and they’d worked on a secret project on Akuze. “The last survivor is on Ontarom, in the Newton system.”

“We’d actually gotten a tip about him, I think,” I said. “Sir, did that secret project have anything to do with thresher maws?”

“I don’t have any hard evidence, but the project was around the same time Alenko’s unit was wiped out,” Hackett confirmed. “Do what you can to protect the doc, Commander, that’s an order.”

After the briefing, I held Kaidan back. “The project these guys were working on… it was on Akuze. I want you with me down there, but if you think you might be too close to the situation…”

Kaidan shook his head decidedly. “I told you. I’ve dealt with it, it’s behind me. Believe me I’ll want some answers out of this scientist if he really was responsible for the death of my unit, but I’ll fight just as hard to protect him as I would any other scientist. But I do appreciate you asking, Commander.”

We got down there and fought our way through the mercenaries to reach Corporal Toombs. Kaidan recognized the name. “Toombs? It’s Alenko. You remember me, don’t you?”

“You can’t be here! You’re dead! They’re all dead! I only survived because I was in a holding cell, for them to run tests on!”

“Shoot him already! Can’t you see he’s crazy?” Dr. Wayne shouted.

“Toombs, calm down. We served together. I want to help you, but I can’t let you kill the doctor,” Kaidan said.

“How can you defend him? He killed them all, just to see what would happen! I can still hear the screaming every night. The only reason I got away is that someone took out a big chunk of Cerberus and funding got pulled from this.”

The mention of Cerberus got my blood boiling, and I knew Kaidan had to be furious too. But his voice stayed calm. “I’m not defending him. What he did was monstrous and the Alliance will make him pay for it. But this isn’t the way, Toombs. Put the gun down. You’re better than this.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know me. You got away with a few scars. The rest of the unit died, and I spent years in a torture chamber! Don’t you tell me who I am.”

“You’re Corporal Toombs, an Alliance soldier. We all swore an oath when we put on the uniform. If you kill him, you’re dishonoring the uniform – and dishonoring the unit,” Kaidan said, voice still calm.

Toombs’s eyes got wide, and he put down the gun. “You’re right. I’m a soldier, not a murderer. But you better promise me this guy goes to trial. I want everyone to know what Cerberus did.”

When we got back to the Mako, Kaidan finally let it out. “Shepard, I know Saren is top priority, but we need to take out Cerberus. No one else needs to go through what Toombs did. At least with the rachni and those green things, most of the dead were their own. Experimenting on humans against their will…”

“Once Saren’s dead, Cerberus becomes my new target, and if I get any news while we’re looking for leads, we’ll follow up. Don’t worry. Cerberus is going down. We’re taking them down.”

It took three years, but Kaidan and I took Cerberus down together. That’s one promise I kept.

The next day, we caught up with the MSV Fedele the next system over. “If it turns out that Dr. Heart was working for Cerberus…” I said.

Garrus chuckled. “Yeah, probably not. All the Cerberus people we’ve seen are human, and they were human black ops, right? Not likely they’d hire a salarian.”

Dr. Saleon had gone beyond organ cloning. Whatever he’d done to his test subjects, it explained why the ship hadn’t moved in weeks. Saleon claimed innocence, but Garrus was certain on his identification. I convinced Garrus to take him in for interrogation and a proper trial, but of course, Saleon just tried to fight us. Garrus was impatient, but I reminded him that how we do things matters.

We headed out to Argos Rho next, following up on a note about a missing ship. We picked up a distress call as soon as we hit the Hydra system. It turned out to be a geth trap. We disabled the distress call and killed the geth.

Oh hell. I’ve been calling these guys geth. Sorry, Legion. If you’re there in the afterlife and I’m heading there now, I give you permission to kick my ass. These weren’t the true geth, and I shouldn’t dishonor the true geth like this. But it’s easier than getting that far ahead of myself. These guys were an offshoot of the geth who worshiped the Reapers. The true geth refused and stayed behind the veil until the war.

Over dinner, Wrex reminded me that his family’s armor was nearby, and I’d promised to help him retrieve it. Since we didn’t get a note about Saren or geth turning up somewhere, we headed there the next day. Wrex was oddly quiet once we’d killed the pirate who’d ended up with it, aside from saying the armor was junk. Garrus told us that what had happened with Saleon got him thinking, and he was going to go back to C-Sec when we were finished with our quest. That the people he’s protecting need to be able to trust him to protect them.


	9. Eletania and Feros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard's fanboy strikes again. Then, space monkeys. Finally, they head to Feros and handle creepy plant pod people.

We needed another stop for fuel and maintenance, so we went back to the Citadel. It was mostly uneventful, except for meeting a woman named Helena Blake who wanted us to take down her partners in a crime ring. They’d gone beyond what she was willing to do, and wanted us to stop them. Oh, and Conrad Verner showed up again. He wanted me to sign him on as another Spectre. I told him that if I had the authority to do that, I’d have already signed up Kaidan and Ashley. He wouldn’t leave it alone, so I told him that I needed him to stay back, keeping humanity strong behind the lines.

“Did you mean that?” Ashley asked as Conrad left, shoulders slumped.

“What, about needing him here? God, no. I just wanted to get rid of him,” I said.

“Not that, obviously you didn’t mean that, I think even he caught that much. I meant about making me and the LT Spectres if you could,” Ash clarified.

“Oh. Not without talking to you first, obviously, but yeah. You two have both got what it takes, I think. I’m trying to convince Garrus to take another shot at it when he goes back to C-Sec.”

“What about Liara and Wrex and Tali?” Kaidan asked.

“Wrex is too much of a hothead, shoot-first-interrogate-later kind. The idea of him without any kind of external control? Kinda scary. Liara and Tali… same problem with both of them. They’re both basically kids who haven’t had the chance to really prove themselves yet, and while I trust either of them to have my back in a fight, they’re not soldiers. Maybe in a couple years.”

On a slightly better note, as we were wandering, we met a friend of my mother’s. At least, he said so. According to him, they served on the Einstein together. I was only with her for a couple weeks while she was on the Einstein, since Dad was on a station that was better suited for families. So it wasn’t entirely unbelievable that I’d just forgotten him or never met him.

As we were leaving, I got a call from Sparatus, which was a huge surprise. There was a geth invasion of a human colony, Zhu’s Hope on Feros. This was more than a few geth ambushing a ship; it was a full-scale invasion. There were also rumors of a turian hanging around.

It was a slim lead, but it was a lead. Helena’s crime ring could wait. When we hit Attican Beta, Hackett called to say the geth had shot down a surveillance drone over Eletania. Could be related, so we went to investigate that first.

I can only hope that when they write my biography, they will leave out the time that Garrus, Kaidan, Ash, and I searched a bunch of monkeys for a lost data module. This was one of the silliest mission requirements I’ve ever had. Of course, I’ll never stop teasing Kaidan about the monkey that kissed him. Saving grace: ammunition.

Of course, he always gets me back. This is where I looked at a Prothean artifact and put Sha’ira’s token into it just because it looked like it would fit. They say I have impulse control problems. They may have a point. I had another vision; in this one, I was a cavewoman who had been abducted by aliens. Protheans.

“Are you okay, Shepard?” Kaidan asked as I came back to my senses.

“No. What happened?”

Garrus helped me up. “There was a flash of light and you just… toppled over. You were out of it for a few seconds, Kaidan was worried you’d hit your head.”

“I’m fine.” So I contradicted myself. Sue me. I’d just had another Prothean vision. “Apparently the Protheans were watching humans when we were cavemen. It felt like I spent a year there, just… being a cavewoman. Doing cavewoman things.”

Ashley grinned. “Yeah? Did you have a cavebaby?”

“Spent a fair bit of time trying to, apparently, but it never took. You wouldn’t believe the number of fights I got into to keep some cavebitch from stealing my cavehusband.”

“You had a cavehusband?” Kaidan asked.

“Yeah. Couple years older than me, did just about everything for the tribe from hunting to medicine to communing with the spirits. That is, when he wasn’t kicking the snot out of any caveman who laid a hand on me. Come on, let’s get out of here. We still have monkeys to search.”

On the trip to Feros, I called my mom about the guy I’d met. She remembered him – he lost his mind a little after the batarian raid on Mindoir, and wasn't getting the help he needed for it. I’d hoped we’d have more time to chat, but she was busy – not a surprise, really.

We were expecting docking procedures once we got to Feros, but no one would answer hails, and no one challenged us as we docked anyway. A colonist met us and was going to take us to their leader, Fai Dan, but we were interrupted by geth. The colonist died, so we found Fai Dan ourselves. Once again, our conversation was interrupted by geth. We took them out and returned to Fai Dan for an update on the colony. They had all kinds of problems – food, water, power, geth. The geth were holed up at ExoGeni headquarters. Of course they were. We helped secure the colony better before heading out. We noticed some odd behavior – no one would tell us about the colony, they just kept telling us to talk to Fai Dan. And in the tunnels, we met a colonist who ranted about the master and how he’d rather die than submit. Then he did.

On the way to HQ, we ran across survivors of ExoGeni. The leader didn’t want to deal with us, but Juliana Baynham overruled him and asked us to look for her daughter Lizbeth. We found Lizbeth in the basement of the ExoGeni building, and she told us about the thorian. That’s what the geth were after, but she didn’t know why. The VI was very helpful, telling us the thorian was in Zhu’s Hope. They had deliberately exposed the colonists to the thorian’s mind-control spores.

“Before or after Cerberus, do you think?” I asked Kaidan.

“After. That’ll give us a chance to see if ExoGeni changes once we take down Saren,” Kaidan said without hesitation. Garrus nodded beside him.

While we were poking around, we picked up a few tips for places to go when we were done here if we didn’t have what we needed for the Mu Relay. There were geth in the Armstrong Nebula, ExoGeni was providing samples to Cerberus. But right now, we needed a way out of the building. It was protected by an energy field generated by the geth ship attached to the building. We managed to get out by rigging shuttle bay doors to slam on it, severing a claw.

We got back to find Jeong threatening to purge the colony, because the thorian was more important than a few colonists. There were quite a few people quick to object to that, and I managed to talk him into keeping the colony going by selling it as a tourism spot and selling the movie rights. It was clear I had to kill the thorian if I wanted to save the colony, and Juliana gave us a nerve gas that would paralyze the colonists temporarily without killing them or hurting us. Kaidan, naturally, was able to make it work with our grenades.

Saving the colonists turned out to be harder than I expected. The thorian had these creeper things, like we’d seen around Admiral Kahoku’s body, and they were mixed in with the colonists. I’m proud of my team; we managed to not kill a single colonist. Fai Dan killed himself fighting the thorian’s attempt to make him kill me.

I don’t know what I expected the thorian to look like, but it wasn’t what we found. That thing was massive. Like, the size of a small Reaper. And it spit out an asari to speak for it. Why is it always asari? Saren doesn’t have any turians working for him? Of course Saren had to go and fuck things up for everyone by making a deal with the thing and then betraying it. The asari attacked. As did several creepers, and more asari. We couldn’t do much damage directly, but Kaidan had the idea of taking out spots where the tendrils anchored to the wall. It worked.

The asari we’d killed had all been clones of Shiala, who had been a follower of Benezia until Saren sold her to the thorian. He’d come to get the Cipher. It’s… I don’t really understand it. It changes your brain so that you can think like a Prothean, so that you can understand the visions from the beacons. I had reservations about trusting my brain to an alien, a servant of Saren at that, but if we were gonna get Saren, I needed to understand the vision.

My first asari mind-meld. I often forget that it wasn’t actually Liara I bonded with first, since she’s the one I’ve bonded with most. The visions still didn’t make any sense, but Shiala assured me that they would, in time. Kaidan wanted to get me back to the ship, but we had to figure out what to do with Shiala first. She wanted to join the colonists and help them get back on their feet, and I saw no problem with that if the colonists were willing to let her.

Back on the ship, Liara offered to help me make sense of things using her knowledge of the Protheans. Of course, this would require her to meld with me too. I trusted Liara, but did I really want to go through that twice? Of course I did. I had a Prothean expert on my side. Saren had the Cipher longer, so I needed the help if I wanted to beat him to understanding. Turns out, the vision was incomplete. That’s part of why it made no sense.

The Council report went better than last time, at least. That’s about the best I can say. I almost cut them off again when Sparatus implied that I wouldn’t have fought just as hard to save the colony if it weren’t human. That’s bullshit. I’m out here as a representative of humanity, and of course, if I have a choice between saving a human colony and saving a turian colony, I’m going to save my own people if I can’t find some way to work out saving both. Anyone who judges me for that, come find me and look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t do the exact same thing for your race. And I get it – that’s why I had to run around and perform miracles to get help for Earth. The difference there is that I was proposing a way to save _all_ of our worlds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did they have to make Sha'ira's name so similar to Shiala's? I get the two of them mixed up all the freakin' time.


	10. Keeping Busy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of small adventures, following various leads on various problems in the galaxy while trying to catch a lead on Saren.
> 
> Armstrong Nebula  
> Cerberus and ExoGeni need better safety protocols  
> Yet more biotic terrorists  
> Helena Blake's gang

I was exhausted, but I’m not the one who nearly fainted during debriefing. I went to check on Liara. She seemed fine, so I told Joker to set course for the Armstrong Nebula and collapsed into bed. It was the obvious choice for our next mission. We had nothing concrete on Saren, so we follow the geth, right?

The geth were spread all over the nebula. We went from one planet to the next, driving off cliffs and killing synthetic bastards. After I made Kaidan throw up by jumping a cliff – _not_ into a horde of geth, thank you very much, that one was all Garrus – Tali refused to come unless I promised not to drive. Since Tali was our resident geth expert, we all agreed that it was best for me to stick with manning the guns. We all got a kick out of the geth bodies littered around the thresher maw nest.

Also, let the record show that it was Kaidan who managed to _flip_ the Mako.

Tali found some data in the main geth base that would make the perfect Pilgrimage gift. After we got back to the ship, she approached me. “Shepard… that geth data? Can I have a copy of it to present as my Pilgrimage gift?”

I hadn’t really thought of it, but that made perfect sense. “You found the data. I’d like a copy but it’s yours to give to who you want. But…”

“Thank you, Shepard. What’s wrong?”

“Your Pilgrimage is over now, isn’t it? You’ve found your gift?”

“Oh! Yes, I can go home whenever I’m ready. But I said I would help you stop Saren and the Reapers. I’m not leaving until I’ve done that. My people take a very dim view of crew who breaks a promise to their captain.”

“Good. You’ve been a huge part of this team, Tali. I hate to think of breaking it up before we’re done.”

Unfortunately, while this probably broke up a major geth incursion that would have happened with the Reaper attack, it didn’t get us any closer to Saren, and we didn’t have any ideas. So I turned to our next priority: the samples ExoGeni had given to Cerberus.

On our way out there, we came across a derelict freighter. From what we could tell, it had gone into the Veil and come back as a warning, filled with husks. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that idea.

What a surprise – the dumbasses at Cerberus got hold of the ExoGeni samples from Feros and managed to turn themselves into husks. Ash got a chance to flip the Mako driving around, and immediately apologized to me and Garrus for doubting us when we told her Kaidan had done it. While we were in the area, we went to investigate the other place they’d sent samples. Same thing. Not Cerberus, but ExoGeni. Who tried to bribe me into letting them go. Now, I’d like to think I’ve got a decent moral compass of my own, but I had Kaidan, Garrus, and Ashley at my back. I’m not stupid enough to accept a bribe in front of a C-Sec officer who’s scary good with a sniper rifle, let alone a biotic who lives by a very strict adherence to his moral code. The dumbass in charge decided to open fire instead of going to trial.

We decided to head back to the Citadel for maintenance again. It was a very routine visit, the only thing of note being visiting Mom’s friend and convincing him to get help for his PTSD.

As we were taking off, Admiral Hackett called with an emergency situation – biotics taking researchers hostage and using them as shields. They were so drugged up that they would walk right into a firefight without a second thought, which meant it would be all too easy to take them out accidentally. He wanted me to handle it because of the way I’d managed not to kill innocent colonists at Zhu’s Hope – figured if anyone could help here, it would be me. Kaidan just shook his head at yet another group of biotic terrorists. We pulled it off, much to my relief and Hackett’s.

The first set of coordinates we got from Helena Blake happened to be in the same area, so I figured we may as well go check it out.

“I’m not too sure about our contact on this one, Shepard,” Kaidan said as we suited up. “Something feels wrong here.”

“Agreed, but taking out slavers and red sand dealers… does it matter where the information comes from, as long as we confirm it before opening fire?”

Kaidan shook his head. “No, if Helena’s being straight with us, these guys need to be taken out. Something just feels… off.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure Helena hasn’t told us everything. But she did give us a very plausible explanation for what she gets out of this, so… it’s worth looking into.”

“Either of you two ever try red sand?” Garrus asked. “I hear it amplifies biotics.”

“My parents would have killed me, and then my CO,” I said. “As it is I nearly got killed when my biotic powers first manifested, because my dad thought I’d gotten sand blasted.”

Kaidan looked away. “A couple times. It’s legal on Illium, or it was when I was there, years ago. The first time didn’t really do much of anything because I only took a very little bit, but the next time… I ODed. I only have a friend’s word for what happened while I was high, but it was… well, it’s not who I am or want to be. Spent the next three months working off the hospital bill, that’s where I learned a lot of the field medic stuff. That’s when I decided to come back and enlist.”

We didn’t find evidence of slaving, but there were crates of red sand all over the cave we found the pirates holed up in.

“I have a question,” Garrus said as we drove back to the pickup point. “When did we go from complaining about each other’s driving to seeing who can pull the craziest stunts?”

“I don’t know, maybe about the time Shepard made me throw up and Tali refused to ride with her anymore?” Kaidan joked. “Quite the accomplishment. Although I still think jumping the cliff into a pack of Cerberus mercs was crazier.”

“Yeah, yeah, Shepard is reckless and borderline certifiable when you let her have control of a lumbering tank, laugh it up.” I certainly was laughing, though.

On our way to the next base, we came across a ship drifting in space. We boarded to find the entire crew dead, except for a woman who had lost her mind when her husband died, and her husband who was being kept alive by machines. We had to kill the woman. Both the captain and the doctor recommended terminating life support, and given the circumstances I absolutely agreed. I’ve taken a lot of lives, but those two kind of haunt me.

I wonder what would have happened if someone like us had come by during Project Lazarus. And if my friends will keep me on machines forever because I beat death once. If I’m going to live, I want to _live_ , you know? If I can’t live, can’t be Shepard and love Kaidan and get into stupid contests with Garrus, then I want to die. For real this time. I can’t put my friends through an eternity caught between hope and despair. I can’t do that to Kaidan again.

The second base was less red sand, but we found the records of their slave ring. So once again, I didn’t feel bad about the raid.

“Okay, everyone. Raise your hand if you’re surprised Helena Blake would rather shoot us than be arrested,” Garrus said when we got back from meeting with her again. Oddly enough, not a single hand went up.

“Now raise your hand if you’re surprised that Shepard not only talked her out of shooting, but managed to convince her to disband her gang and go straight,” Kaidan said.

I raised my hand. It was the only one up. “I didn’t think that would work! I was just trying to give you two time to get a good look at what the situation was behind her. I’m still not sure I trust her to actually go straight, but she’s right. Gambling, smuggling weapons… I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

As we were heading back to the relay, we caught a distress signal and went to investigate. A ship had gone derelict, with an ion trail leading to a nearby planet. As we were driving around looking for the crash site, we ran into a geth trap. That was interesting. 

At some point, we kind of stopped bringing Tali or Liara, unless we needed a geth expert or a Prothean expert. I think it was because of the increasing craziness of our driving. Ash and Wrex joined in the fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure why it took so long to get this one up. I promise next chapter will be quicker!
> 
> The first time I tried to play Mass Effect, I was on a computer that was old and could barely run it, and some of the Mako driving in the Armstrong Nebula was the final nail in the coffin for that attempt. I gave it another try as soon as I got a new computer and it was much, much better. I could actually play the frogger minigame!


	11. Rachni and Terra Nova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard finds Rachni in Styx Theta, leading to an investigation of whether the queen broke her word or ExoGeni had more samples they hadn't mentioned.
> 
> Then they learn the truth: neither one.
> 
> Hackett asks for their help with a batarian terrorist attack at Terra Nova. Shepard agrees, and saves the planet - although the bad guy got away.

We started hearing rumors of weird things happening out in Styx Theta, so with nothing better to go on, I took us out there to investigate. We found rachni.

“So, I was stupid to trust the queen to disappear,” I said as we blasted the last of the colony.

“Not necessarily,” Kaidan said. “Could be ExoGeni sending ‘samples’ offworld for study or testing. Rachni breed fast, I’ve heard, but fast enough to have full-grown warriors already?”

Garrus shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I was a lot more interested in the krogan parts of the Rachni Wars than how rachni worked. Never expected to fight rachni, while krogan are still around being nuisances.”

“I’ll show you nuisances,” Wrex growled.

“Case in point,” Garrus said.

I looked between them warily. “There a problem here?”

“Nope. Turian’s got a quad,” Wrex said. “Almost starting to like him.”

In the facility, we found out that they’d come from somewhere in Argos Rho, but more importantly, we picked up a distress signal from a planet in the next system over. We got there in time to help them hold off some rachni attacks, but they’d been fighting for nearly a day straight with very little rest between waves. I volunteered my squad to investigate the open underground area they’d found.

“Not sure about life cycle, but the stories my granddad told me about the Rachni Wars always said that when the biotics were out, the colony was doomed,” Wrex said. “Think we killed ‘em all.”

“No queen,” Kaidan pointed out. “I’m thinking this is an ExoGeni problem, not the queen.”

“Still shouldn’t have trusted the queen,” Wrex said.

We headed for Argos Rho and found the space station the supply ships had come from. We also found logs explaining how the rachni had gotten here.

“Well, you were both wrong,” Garrus said dryly. “It wasn’t the queen breaking her word or ExoGeni being stupid.

“Cerberus. Naturally. Should’ve realized,” Kaidan said, and I agreed.

We destroyed the ship and headed out. At this point, we had no leads on Cerberus, no leads on Saren, and nothing to do for the Alliance. We were just about to head for the Citadel to check in with the Council when I got an emergency call from Hackett, alerting me to a situation on Terra Nova. Someone was trying to run an asteroid into the colony, and there was less than a day before collision. Normandy was the only ship with a chance of saving the colony.

We got there with under four hours to get the job done. Our first task was to disable the three fusion torches propelling the asteroid. We were contacted by Kate Bowman, a scientist who was supposed to be bringing the asteroid to Terra Nova to create an orbital station. Batarian extremists had hijacked the asteroid and intended to destroy the colony. We met the chief engineer, who told us what we’d need to do to disarm the torches.

Torches disarmed, we headed out for the main facility. Balak, the batarian in charge, had rigged charges that would kill Bowman and all the other hostages. We could spend our time defusing them, or we could chase Balak. It was a tougher choice than it should’ve been when I went for the bombs. I hope Charn, wherever he is, will forgive me for it. He was certainly much better than Balak, although still a batarian slaver.

Hackett was extremely grateful to hear Terra Nova had been saved, though understandably upset that Balak escaped. I promised that hunting Balak was on the Spectre To-Do List, along with Saren, Cerberus, and ExoGeni. Unfortunately, I had no leads on _any_ of those things at the moment. Hackett suggested that I head to Pinnacle Station to do some training.


	12. Virmire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mission starts out looking like paradise and quickly descends into Hell.
> 
> Shepard faces a choice. The first of many, the first she never quite got over.
> 
> Warning: canonical major character death

Then the Council called. One of the worst chapters of my life was about to begin. They’d gotten a very garbled distress signal from a salarian STG group sent to investigate a facility on Virmire, which they believed was connected to Saren somehow. The entire team was happy enough to pounce on the lead.

My first thought about Virmire was how beautiful the planet was, at least in the drop zone. Tropical, beautiful beaches, it was the kind of place I could see taking a shore leave on. Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

We fought our way through a fuckton of geth to reach the salarian camp. Captain Kirrahe wasn’t happy that we were all he got, but he was able to confirm for us that this was Saren’s base and that he was building a krogan army here. He’d found a cure for the genophage. We needed to blow the base, which meant blowing up the cure, too.

Wrex objected. Loudly. We ended up with guns drawn on each other before I was able to convince him that whatever the cure was, if it made the krogan slaves to Saren or Reapers, Wrex didn’t want it for his people. Ash had her gun drawn too, I saw when I looked back. Thank god she didn’t shoot.

Kirrahe came up with a plan. Not a good plan, but about the best we were going to be able to do. His men would attack from three fronts while my team slipped in the back and disabled enough of the defenses for the Normandy to drop off a bomb. Then Kaidan would arm the bomb and the Normandy would get us out of there. After the blast, we’d come back and look for salarian survivors. The rub: Kirrahe’s men would likely get slaughtered, but he needed one of my team with him to facilitate communication. Kaidan and Ash both volunteered immediately. I chose Ash. I knew Kaidan could get the job done, but I needed him for the bomb, as Ash quickly pointed out.

Shadow team snuck in the back way. Along the way we were able to help out Kirrahe and Ash a bit, scrambling communications, hitting geth flyers while they refueled. Kaidan broke through the alarms. He mentioned that he could trigger alarms on the far side, but didn’t recommend it. I agreed; no need to send the guards over to the salarians. We could handle them.

Inside, we found husks, geth, krogan… and salarians. Kirrahe’s missing men. One of Saren’s workers offered to help us in exchange for her life. I let her go. She also told us about indoctrination, and was the first to suggest that Saren wasn’t using Sovereign to control his followers, but just Sovereign’s chief puppet.

In Saren’s lab, we found the other beacon he had used. I used it. We didn’t have much choice. It wasn’t as damaged as the other one, I guess, or thanks to the Cipher I was stronger, because I didn’t pass out and spend fifteen hours asleep this time. On our way out, we met Sovereign. It spoke to us. At the time, I didn’t think much of its boasting; now, I wish I’d been more afraid. More alert. That I’d found something more compelling to give the Council and the Alliance. Maybe we’d have been readier.

Yeah, right.

Sovereign told us exactly what was happening: organic life had hit whatever threshold they used, so they came in to wipe out the advanced races. This was a cycle that had been repeated every 50,000 years or so far, far back into the past. If it weren’t for the Reapers, by the time humans got off Earth, space would have been so crowded with aliens we wouldn’t know what to do. Assuming humans ever developed at all; 200,000 years ago, four cycles, humans sure weren’t much to look at. An alien race might have deemed our world perfect for colonization, interrupting human evolution before it really began. Strange to think about it that way.

We fought our way to the breeding facility, where Normandy brought in the bomb. Then Ash called – her unit had gotten pinned down on the AA tower and she wasn’t going to be able to get out without help. Kaidan told me to go, so I went although it felt wrong not having Kaidan at my back. Then Saren showed up. I could choose to turn around and save Kaidan, knowing Ash would die, or I could keep going to Ash, knowing I’d never make it back to Kaidan in time to get him out too. Either way, I was leaving one of my closest friends to die.

I’ve heard people question my choices here. I chose to send Ash with Kirrahe because in a straight-up fight, she was better than Kaidan, while Kaidan was the closest thing I had to a bomb guy and I’d need him inside. When the shit hit the fan and I had to choose one of them to save, I turned around and went back for Kaidan. This is where people question me. Did I make the choice because that was the right one, or did I do it because I was in love with Kaidan? Here’s what went through my head: “Crap, I have to choose. The way back is going to be a lot clearer. We’re not halfway, so Kaidan’s closer. Ashley knew going with Kirrahe was likely to end this way; arming the bomb was supposed to be safe. If Kaidan dies, Saren could defuse the bomb. I’m going for Kaidan.” Anderson, Hackett, the Council… not a single one questioned that logic. It could have been Kaidan with Kirrahe and Sparatus with the bomb, and I’d like to think I’d have made the choice I did.

At least no one can say I saved Kaidan because he was human.

Everyone always talks about my relationship with Kaidan, with Garrus, with Tali and Liara. People tend to forget that while Ash may not have always been part of the field team, I loved her. Ash was part of my family. Losing Ash didn’t hurt any less than losing Kaidan or Garrus or Tali or Liara would have. Losing Jenkins sucked, but losing comrades is part of a soldier’s life. Losing Ash was the first truly devastating blow, the first one I never quite recovered from.

Saren tried to convince me that we should join with the Reapers, that if we did so the Reapers would spare lives. Wow is that so much bullshit. He was obviously indoctrinated, and I tried to save him, but he was too far gone. We fought, but he got away. He ran, and I decided it was more important to grab Kaidan and get the hell out myself than to try to chase him. I had everything he did, now, and I had Liara.

Kaidan was the first to question my choice to save him. I understood; survivor’s guilt is a hell of a thing. I tried to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault, that the mission was just too much, the breaks fell wrong and we weren’t able to get Ash out.

The Council was their usual helpful selves, dismissing the fact that Sovereign is a Reapers as a lie of Saren’s to manipulate me and throw me off his trail. Clever strategy if that had been what Saren was doing, but it wasn’t. And when the assholes insisted, we lost the signal. Such a shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Ash. I do. But it takes a deliberate choice that is out of character for most of my Shepards for her to survive my playthroughs.
> 
> (Of course, the fact that Ash is far below Tali for Best Romanceable Female for mShep and not a romanceable female for fShep, while Kaidan is just the teeniest bit above Garrus for Best Romanceable Male for fShep and WAY the hell above Steve for Best Romanceable Male for mShep doesn't exactly hurt.)


	13. Pinnacle Station and Grounding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reeling from Ash's death and still looking for leads, Shepard takes some time to train at Pinnacle Station.
> 
> Things go from bad to worse when Shepard discovers that Saren is on his way to Ilos, and the Council grounds her. A daring escape puts her on her way to Ilos.

With Ash dead and nothing quite coming together, Garrus suggested that we go to Pinnacle Station. We spent a day there running through the simulations, and of course, I got there just in time to stop a turian bully from abusing his authority because his pride was wounded when a human beat him. I kicked his ass in every simulation. Well, Kaidan, Garrus, and I did.

The guy in charge, Ahern, offered me a special scenario based on one of his worst missions: retrieve data and then hold out for evac while turians tried to kill us. Kaidan and Garrus couldn’t believe it when I said to turn the safeties off, but we made it through just fine. Could’ve held out for hours.

“Shepard, you’re scaring me,” Kaidan said when we got back.

I didn't want to hear it, so I kind of snapped at him. “We were fine, Kaidan, you know that. If you didn’t want to risk it, I can’t imagine Wrex wouldn’t jump at the chance.”

“No way. No way was I letting you go in there without me at your back. Garrus either." Kaidan was right, and I knew it. That didn't make me want to hear it. "But you know, you can’t stop Saren and the Reapers if you die in a combat sim trying to prove something to some jackass admiral.”

“You think that’s why I had him turn off the safeties?”

Kaidan looked at me and I could see the very real fear in his eyes. I hadn't realized just how shaken he was by this, and now I felt like crap. “I hope it is, because the only other thing I can think of is that you had him turn off the safeties because you’ve got a death wish. You’ve always been reckless, but this time, you were gambling my life and Garrus’s, too, for no reason. It’s different than playing with the Mako or charging headfirst into a pack of mercs with your biotics and a shotgun, and you know that.”

“You’re right,” I had to admit. “After I tore them a new one for being stupid, I’d make any of my crew who pulled a stunt like that take a couple weeks’ leave and go see a psychiatrist. If we were on any other mission, I’d make _myself_ do it. But we can’t take the time off from this! Not now.”

Kaidan knew that, and a little of the tension disappeared from his face when he saw he'd gotten through to me. “Just… promise me you won’t do something stupid, at least, not without me and Garrus backing you up? We’ve already lost Ash, I don’t even want to think about losing you, too. It’s the reality of a soldier’s life that people die, but there’s what happened to Ash, and there’s dying in a training sim when you overruled the objections of both the guy in charge and the guy running the actual equipment. Even Jenkins. That was a soldier’s death. This was…”

“Stupid. I know. I’ll… I’ll take tomorrow off, go check out that retirement place I won, unless something comes up on Saren. Even the Alliance and Cerberus can wait a day while I get my head in the game, right?” It was the best I could do.

It was apparently good enough, as Kaidan visibly relaxed. “Good. Would you call me paranoid if I told you not to go alone? You kind of… attract trouble.”

“Wasn’t planning on going alone,” I said with a grin. “Hadn’t quite decided between taking the entire team or just asking you, though.”

I’d love to know how that trip went, so of course, in my dreams, the pieces of the vision all came together into a coherent message. I went to Liara, who helped me put it all together and identified the location of the Conduit as Ilos. Maybe, just maybe, we’d gotten ahead of Saren. We needed to get to Ilos, and the only way was through the Mu Relay.

The Council called us in to join a fleet going after Saren when we sent the report. They lied. Udina grounded me, refused to let me go to Ilos on my own. I appealed to the Alliance, but they backed the Council. I don’t know if the Council really cared what I did, but Udina didn’t want me messing up his little play to show that they needed him on the Council.

The situation sucked. Hard. I’m not the type to break down and give up, but knowing that the only hope of stopping Saren was taking the Normandy to Ilos and I wasn’t allowed to do that just about did it. Kaidan came to talk to me. I figured, hey, if we were grounded… why the hell not start something now? It took a couple tries to get through to Kaidan, but he got on board quickly. We were leaning in for the kiss when Joker interrupted.

I was glad to hear from Anderson, but god Joker has terrible timing. On the way to Flux, I met someone who I swear must be Conrad Verner’s brother. He was negotiating with the salarians but overdid things on a mental stimulant. I liked the sound of his assistant’s position better anyway, and I’m sure as hell not going to enable an addict.

Anderson had a plan to let me steal the Normandy. It felt wrong, but it was necessary. I wasn’t sure about leaving Anderson holding the bag, and I was worried about the crew, but in the end… what else could I do? Anderson had a couple ideas for how to do it: break into Udina’s office, or break into Citadel Control. Either one was a huge risk for him. He’d be the one facing the music, so I let him make the call. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he chose to break into Udina’s office.

Later on, Anderson told me how good it felt punching Udina in the face. I wish I'd gotten the chance.

Anderson was right – the crew was behind me 100%. We took the ship and ran for Ilos. On the way out there, Kaidan came to visit. I was almost disappointed when he said we were doing the right thing or he wouldn’t be here, but he quickly made it clear that he was thinking along the lines I was. We just stole a ship, broke our oaths to the Alliance, I told the crew that I was going to go down for kidnapping as many of them as I could… why the hell should we worry about fraternization, when tomorrow morning we’d wake up in Hell?

It was the best night of my life to that point. The morning was kind of ruined because Joker still has the worst possible timing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why the hell did Shepard turn off the safeties at Pinnacle Station? One reason among many I'm not a fan of that particular DLC.
> 
> I have to say, watching Anderson punch Udina is one of the most satisfying moments in ME1. Especially in retrospect!


	14. The Battle of the Citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard returns to the Citadel and makes a call that will shape much of the future. Then she has to deal with the immediate consequences of her choices.

Pressly couldn’t find us a landing zone close enough until Joker said he could drop the Mako even with only twenty meters instead of the theoretical minimum hundred. Well, we had a lot of experience with crazy in the Mako, so I told Kaidan and Garrus to suit up. Liara, too, unfortunately. We’d need a Prothean expert to help us identify what we were after.

The drop worked exactly like Joker said it would, and we arrived just in time to see the bunker doors closing on Saren. If the Council hadn’t delayed me, we would have gotten there first. The first thing we had to do was to overcome the security lockdown. This is when I learned that the Cipher meant I could understand Prothean.

We raced down the hall in the Mako – creepy underground bunker indeed. I was surprised at the lack of geth presence in the tunnels, but I guess Saren needed all the geth he could get to secure the Conduit. Then we ran into the trap Vigil set so it could tell us what we needed to know. Specifically, that the Citadel is a giant mass relay that the Reapers would come through. That’s what Sovereign needed Saren and the geth for.

The Conduit turned out to be a back door onto the Citadel. We got to Saren just as he figured out how to activate it. People say that we drove the Mako like crazy people. Hell we said we drove the Mako like crazy people. So taking the Mako through the relay? Well, we were already crazy, so why the hell not?

Seeing the Citadel in ruins… it was hard. Especially from the outside, running toward where we could see Sovereign perched on the top of the Citadel towers. But we made it, just in time to see Saren uploading his program to allow Sovereign to assume direct control. I was able to talk him down, although Sovereign had enough control that the only thing Saren could do was to kill himself.

Then it was time for another of those tough decisions. People accuse me of holding the fleet back to save human lives. They’re partly right. I also held the fleet back to save asari lives, salarian lives, the lives of every other race in this galaxy. The battle against Sovereign was going to be the toughest any of us had ever seen. The _Destiny Ascension_ was badly damaged – so damaged as to be useless. The Alliance fleet was strong. One ship, even one carrying the Council, for an entire fleet? Garrus calls it the ruthless calculus of war. I call it strategy.

I will say, the fact that the Council had not only been utterly useless but actively impeded my efforts? Yeah, that made it a lot easier to make the call.

Saren had let Sovereign implant him. Dumbass. Sovereign used the implants to bring him to some sort of synthetic life, so my squad had to beat his ass down after all. We did. I’m not sure whether it’s coincidence or not that Sovereign’s shields failed at the same time. Joker and the Normandy led the fleet punching holes in the Reaper, destroying it.

I hate being trapped in rubble. This was my first experience. But I had to get to Kaidan and Garrus and Liara, and Tali and Wrex and Joker and Anderson. They’d apparently given me up for dead. When I came out of the rubble, the looks on their faces…

Then it was time to make the most difficult call of my life. “Admiral Hackett, this is Commander Shepard. I surrender myself to face the charges against me. I take full responsibility for the theft of the Normandy and for mutiny.”

Kaidan broke in before Hackett could say anything. “Sir, Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko here. Commander Shepard didn’t act alone; I surrender myself to the Alliance as well.”

Hackett got on the line. “Funny. I got a call from the Normandy from Jeff Moreau making the same claim. Is that the whole conspiracy, then? The three of you?”

“No, sir, but the others involved are not Alliance citizens and were acting on my orders. I’m not sure it’s worth causing a diplomatic incident over, given the state of things at the moment.”

“Sir, she forgot to include me,” Anderson said. “It was my idea, and while I didn’t go with the Normandy, I assaulted the ambassador and overrode the lockdown to make her escape possible.”

Hackett gathered the four of us in the briefing room of his ship. “I’m sure you’re aware of the very serious nature of the charges that the Alliance could bring against you. Captain Anderson, as the highest-ranked member of this conspiracy, what would you like to say in your defense?”

“Sir. Commander Shepard tried everything she could to convince the Council and the Alliance of the need to get to Ilos. She tried going through every official channel there is. As a Spectre, she does have the authority to break whatever laws she deems necessary and to give orders to her followers to do so. She could have abused that authority from the beginning. Instead, she turned to it as a last resort. Lieutenants Alenko and Moreau are involved because of their loyalty to Shepard and their belief that her cause was important enough to justify the desperate actions. Had she not taken the actions she did, Sovereign would have torn through the defenses and brought more of its kind through the relay on the Citadel. You saw what it took to overcome one Reaper. Shepard’s actions are the only reason anyone is alive to hold her responsible.”

“Lieutenant Commander Shepard? Anything to add?” Hackett asked. Just a tip: never play poker against Admiral Hackett.

“Yes, sir. The death of the Council was regrettable, but tactically sound. The Destiny Ascension was a fine ship, but she was just one ship. By holding you out until you could attack Sovereign, the overall attack was much stronger, and rebuilding will be quicker and less costly.”

“Lieutenant Alenko?”

“No, sir. Anderson covered things pretty well.” There was a pause, and then Kaidan added, “Sir, I was there when Sovereign and the Prothean VI Vigil talked to Shepard. The Reapers are real and a serious threat, and whatever the outcome of our courts-martial, the Alliance needs to prepare and to convince the other races to do the same. We bought some time by taking away their ability to come through the Citadel, but they will find another way.”

“Leave it to you to have nothing to add and then give a speech,” Joker said. “Sir, I don’t regret anything I did, and I would do it again under the same circumstances.”

“Very well. Anderson, Shepard, your actions were extreme. But so was the situation. The consequences of not mutinying are dire enough to excuse everything. In recognition of your heroism in the Battle of the Citadel, the Alliance chooses not to bring charges against you. Shepard, I could have overruled your decision to hold back and wait for a chance at Sovereign. I didn’t, because your strategy was good. Considering your demonstrated leadership and ability to keep your head in a crisis, you are promoted to Staff Commander. Alenko, you’ve demonstrated the courage, judgment, and loyalty that the Alliance needs in its leaders. You are promoted to Lieutenant Commander. Moreau…”

“I’m a flight lieutenant. I’m happy with that. I’m a pilot, not a leader.”

“Understood. Anderson, the Alliance hasn’t reached a decision about you yet. There are a couple things that could happen, and we’re waiting to see what happens in the wake of the Council’s death.”

Later, Udina called Anderson and me to talk. He wanted to form a new Council – one led by a human. That wasn’t why I’d done it and I told him so. He insisted that it’s what the other races would want, and asked me to recommend humanity’s first councilor. I didn’t care and I said so. I knew it would end up being Udina, but who else was there, really? But I couldn’t bring myself to endorse the fool.

The Normandy didn’t stay long at the Citadel. We needed to get back out. The Reapers were still out there, as was Cerberus. However, they could wait a couple weeks while we took some shore leave somewhere we could actually relax.

We spent the next two months hunting geth, hunting Cerberus, and generally getting more and more frustrated with both the Alliance and the new Council. No one wanted to believe in the Reapers. I didn’t want to believe in the Reapers either, but after everything I’d been through, I had to. Every single member of my crew was with me.

Tali was the first to leave. She had to get back to her people, to finish her Pilgrimage. Wrex was next. He wanted to go back to Tuchanka and see if maybe, just maybe, there might still be a spark of hope for the krogan. It took a while for Garrus to talk himself into going, but eventually, he did head for the Citadel to rejoin C-Sec.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Council is on board!" "The Council that's responsible for this battle happening in the first place? Shyeah, give me a GOOD reason to save your crippled ass." "There are ten thousand people on board!" "Oh. Yeah, that's a good one." For this Shepard, it's not about human vs. alien. It's about one crippled ship against however much of the Alliance fleet would get torn apart saving the Ascension, weakening the attack on Sovereign. Garrus's ruthless calculus of war. If the salarian fleet had been late to the party, she'd have told them to hang back, too.
> 
> And seriously, Hackett could have overriden the order. Spectre or not, he still outranks her as far as the Alliance is concerned.
> 
> The promotions here are mostly to make Kaidan's being a Staff Commander two years later a little more plausible. Two promotions in two years, at that level, is kind of pushing it. (At least it's not as bad as Ash going from Gunnery Sergeant - an enlisted rank - to Lieutenant Commander - an officer rank - in the same amount of time. That's, as I recall, *four* promotions in two years.)


	15. Attack and Freedom's Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One Normandy is destroyed, and another is built. Two years are skipped over because this is Shepard's memories and she has none of those two years.
> 
> Shepard makes a deal with the devil after discovering the Collector attacks on human colonies.

Liara and Kaidan were still with me when the Collector ship hit. That was a nightmare. We had no warning, no time to prepare, and my people were loaded onto escape pods. Joker blames himself for wanting to go down with the ship, but the truth is, I get it. The Normandy SR-1 was a beautiful ship, and everyone on board knew we’d never get another like her. But we would get another ship, and I’d need someone to fly her, and I only take the best. Joker is the best.

It’s hard to think about the fact that the last thing Kaidan remembers from that attack is me shoving him away and telling him to go do his duty. First, that he was willing to forget duty to stay with me, just in case, and second… well, maybe things would have gone differently if I hadn’t shoved him away then.

I got Joker to the escape pod, but then the Collectors came around for another attack, and I was spaced. With my O2 line cut. I was dead and I knew it. My last thoughts were mourning the Normandy and hoping Kaidan survived the crash and would be okay.

They were supposed to be my last thoughts, anyway. But then, I thought I heard voices. I struggled to wake up, to see where I was and what I could do about it, but they sedated me, knocked me out again.

The next time I woke up, it was to find myself under attack. Come on, now. Can’t a girl spend some time _dead_ without someone trying to kill her? A voice guided me through the complex until we lost communications. Fortunately before I could get too lost, I met Jacob Taylor. He’s the one who told me I’d been dead for two years, that my crew had scattered. I listened to logs when I came across them. It seemed like the people who’d done this had spared no expense in making me the real me. That was slightly reassuring, that I probably wasn’t a robot or a controlled clone.

Then we ran into Wilson. It was obvious the guy was lying when he started overexplaining and overprotesting. Then Jacob told me that these guys were Cerberus. I guess they finally had a project go right. Well, that did NOT make me comfortable, but at least Jacob had told me. Still, once we got off the station, I was saying thank you but I’m never working for you guys, so either kill me or let me go.

Miranda shot Wilson. He was the traitor responsible for the mechs attacking us. She then informed me that Cerberus didn’t care about any other survivors on the station, and she had no idea why the Illusive Man wanted me back from the dead. I wasn’t happy getting on a Cerberus shuttle, but there wasn’t any other way off the station, and I wasn’t going to waste a second chance at life. I could escape later, I told myself.

On the way, she and Jacob gave me a little pop quiz to make sure my memories were intact. Of course she had to drag up Virmire. Worst moment of my life. Didn’t exactly endear her to me. I had no idea what to expect when I was shown to the communications chamber to meet The Illusive Man.

Can I just say right now what a pretentious and horrible name that is? I’m going to call him Tim for the rest of this. Jackass doesn’t deserve his title.

The conversation with Tim was… hostile, awkward, and in the end, I had no choice. Human colonies were disappearing, and if I wanted to do anything about it, I needed resources. Cerberus was offering pretty much unlimited resources. Tim proposed a trial run: take Miranda and Jacob to Freedom’s Progress, the latest colony to go missing. I didn’t trust either of them, and I hate working with a team I don’t trust at my back, but it was the best chance to see for myself what had happened in my absence.

On the way out, I took the chance to get to know Jacob and Miranda a little. Miranda was fairly hostile, not trusting me either. She told me she’d wanted to put a control chip in my brain, and that she was worried about the risks Tim was taking in making me who I was. Jacob was a little friendlier. He told me that humanity being part of the Council hadn’t really done a damn thing to change the politicians – “Same bullshit, different leaders.”

As we approached Freedom’s Progress, Jacob told me they hadn’t found anything at previous sites, but this one we were hoping would be different because we would get there first. As it happens, we didn’t. It’s an eerie thing walking through an abandoned colony. Dinners half-eaten, vidscreens still on. I withheld the smirk when Miranda realized we weren’t alone here after having been dismissive of my orders to watch for survivors. Mostly because once again we were under attack by mechs.

As we explored, we got guns drawn us by a group of quarians. I couldn’t believe it when Tali jumped between us. She couldn’t believe it when she saw it was me. It didn’t take much to convince her, and she agreed to work with me to find Veetor’Nara, a quarian who had come here on Pilgrimage.

I was extremely impressed by what two years had done for Tali. She was in charge of this mission, and she didn’t take crap from her subordinates. But she was still willing to work with me, despite my current distasteful associates, because she trusted me. She had good reason to hate Cerberus – not just what we’d seen on our travels together, but they’d tried to destroy a ship of the flotilla.

There was a plan. Prazza, one of Tali’s quarians, messed up the plan. I was not happy. He and his entire squad ended up dead. Idiots. We found Veetor, and he had security footage of the swarms and the Collectors. He had also lost his mind. Miranda wanted to take him with us, but all we needed was the footage, and Veetor needed treatment. And not the kind Cerberus specializes in. I asked Tali to come with me, and she wanted to, but had to do something for her own people first.

Of course, Tim already knew it was Collectors, he just didn’t have proof. He didn’t know much about the Collectors, at least, not that he was telling me. But he did know where they came from, and if we wanted to save humanity, where we had to go. Naturally, it was beyond the Omega-4 relay. No ship had ever come back from trying to go through.

That was my job: build a team to take through the Omega-4 relay, figure out a way to stop the Collectors there, and get back. Getting back was optional. Tim was rather unhelpful when it came to my old teammates. What a surprise. He had no idea on Kaidan or Garrus, Wrex was on Tuchanka and probably busy, and Liara was... working for the Shadow Broker? That didn't sound like the Liara I remembered. It couldn’t hurt to take a look at his new people, I supposed, although I was still going to keep my eyes open for at the very least Kaidan and Garrus. If I walked into Hell without them at my back, I wasn’t so sure I was walking back out.

Still, Tim did one good thing for me. He gave me the Normandy SR-2. Complete with Joker to fly her. I wasn’t sure about most of the crew, but with Joker and Dr. Chakwas aboard, I somehow felt comfortable with the idea of closing my eyes every once in a while. At the time, EDI made me nervous, but looking back – she may be the best thing Tim ever did.

God I hope that bastard kid was lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Mass Effect 2.


	16. Normandy SR-2 and The Citadel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard gets to know the new crew and returns to the Citadel.

Okay, maybe it was a bit of overreaction to jump down Miranda’s throat and assert my authority when she suggested starting by getting Mordin Solus. It was a suggestion, not an order. Still, I wanted it as clear as possible that this was not a Cerberus-run ship, and that we were doing things my way. As Kaidan said: we do the right things, for the right reasons. We don’t cut corners.

Aside from the massive cut corner of taking Cerberus’s resources, I guess.

Miranda had a good point about getting Dr. Solus, but I wanted to check in with the Council, with the Alliance. Let them know I was alive, see if there was a snowball’s chance in hell of being able to do this without using Cerberus. On the way there, I explored the ship, introducing myself to the crew. Knowing they were hand-picked by Tim made me a bit wary, but there were a few that my instincts said were okay: Gabby Daniels and Ken Donnelly in engineering, and Kelly Chambers, my yeoman.

Both engineers were ex-Alliance who had quit in disgust when Udina tried to sweep the Reapers under the rug and throw me in with them. I was already planning to steal the Normandy from Cerberus and hand her to the Alliance once the Collectors were dealt with, and I had a feeling these two would come with me.

I was less sure Kelly would come with me, but I was glad to have her. She seemed friendly enough, and she was a trained counselor. Informally, though. Just someone to talk to if someone needed to talk, and she could advise me if someone seemed to be under more stress than usual. The types of missions I took people on, a counselor sounded like the best idea ever.

Others of the crew weren’t so likeable. Rupert Gardner was a damn fine cook once I got him decent ingredients, but he was easily the most obnoxious person on my ship.

Joker seemed a little too enthusiastic about the ship – except for EDI, who he hated. I suppose if my entire life were about flying, and then I was grounded for two years for no reason at all… I might be less picky about who I’d work for. EDI explained her function to me, and she sounded incredibly useful, but I still had my concerns.

I decided I liked Jacob when he told me to my face that he didn’t trust Tim completely but as long as both Tim and I backed up our words about stopping the Collectors, then he was perfectly happy to work for us. Like me, he wanted a better idea what the hell we were doing.

“Okay, Jacob. You seem like a decent enough guy, so maybe you can tell me. Why the hell is the armory up here instead of down by the shuttle? It’s the opposite way from where most of the crew hangs out. Seems stupid to call Miranda for a mission, have her come up here, and then go three decks down to the shuttle bay…” Of all the changes to the Normandy, this was the one that bugged me most.

Jacob just shrugged. “You’re right. Cerberus didn’t consult me about ship design, Commander. I just maintain the armory, I don’t pick where the engineers put it.”

Miranda and I had a good chat where she finally opened up a little. At first, we talked about Cerberus. She was thoroughly convinced that Tim was a guy working for humanity, even if some of the people working for him were bad. She also told me about her genetic modification. She was designed – everything about her was chosen, from her relatively strong biotics to how she looked. She is a very beautiful woman, but I don’t think she’s as pretty as she thinks she is.

I think it finally sank in that I was on a Cerberus vessel instead of Alliance when I went to my quarters. First of all, my quarters were the entire top deck. There was a fish tank. It was huge, things were designed for comfort, it felt like a decent apartment on the Citadel or particularly civilized world. I had never seen a fish tank on a warship before, and somehow, just knowing I had one made me feel the need to have fish.

We got to the Citadel, and I think when the scanners went off because I was supposed to be dead is when it really hit me that two years had gone by. Captain Bailey and I had a productive chat about my death being exaggerated, and he told me a little about how the Citadel was getting back to normal.

Anderson was thrilled to see me. The Council wouldn’t meet with me – they bought the bullshit of me being only interested in human concerns, since I let the previous Council die. I didn’t feel like explaining myself again, and Anderson understood. He’d already heard about me working for Cerberus somehow. I didn’t like that. I’d been awake two days, and outside of Cerberus, the only people I’d interacted with were Tali’s squad. I explained myself, and Anderson sympathized but knew that I wouldn’t get Alliance or Council help. Udina had led the Council so far up their own assholes they thought the stars shone out of their butts.

“Where’s Staff Lieutenant Alenko? Rumor is he’s still with the Alliance.”

Anderson took a deep breath. “Staff _Commander_ Alenko’s on a special assignment, one I can’t tell you about. Not while you’re working with Cerberus.”

“Can you at least let him know I’m alive?” I'd have preferred to tell him myself, but I understood the concern. And I wanted Kaidan to know I was back from someone he could believe, not from rumor mills.

“I’m sorry, Shepard." He really did look sorry, too. "Alenko’s under a communication blackout. When he gets back, I’ll tell him everything, and if you want to record something for him I’ll see that he gets it then.”

I wasn’t thrilled with it, but it was the best Anderson could do, and I got that. I recorded a message for Kaidan. I wonder now if Anderson ever listened to it. I know he didn’t give it to Kaidan.

While we were on the Citadel, I took the time to pick up some supplies. While shopping, I ran across a C-Sec guy hassling a quarian over a volus’s credit chit. I couldn’t believe it when I proved she wasn’t a thief and all they had to say was “oh well, it could’ve been her.” Tali had occasionally mentioned that quarians had a bad reputation, but I don’t think I’d realized just how bad the prejudice was.

Listening to the news was somewhat weird. Mom wanted to honor my legacy? That felt backwards somehow. I wondered if I should call her, but got distracted by my errands. It was good to see Emily Wong reporting, though. Unfortunately, Khalisah bint-Sinan al-Jilani was still out there. I tried to explain my position. I should have hit her.

Then I met the other love of my life. I mentioned how I planned to get some fish for my fish tank? Well, when I stopped by a pet store to get some… there was this hamster staring at me. A hamster. I can’t explain why, but I just had to take him home. I named him Fuzzbucket and installed a hamster cage on the shelves in my quarters.

There are no fish in the lakes on the Presidium. In case you were wondering.

I headed back to the Normandy. There were a lot of things to do, and I flipped through the stack of reports. One caught my eye – Tim had made a deal with a thief named Kasumi Goto, and I was supposed to meet her on the Citadel. We hadn’t left yet, so I went to get her. She had a deal with Cerberus – she helps me with the Omega-4 mission, and Cerberus – meaning me – helped her recover her partner’s greybox.


	17. Omega 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes to Omega and meets an asari crime lord, an archangel, and a mercenary. She takes a break to chat with an old friend before going after the salarian scientist.

There were three people to pick up on Omega, so that seemed like the logical place to go next. I took Rupert his groceries and stuck around for supper. I missed the old crew – it was lonely without Wrex’s tales of mercenary life or Garrus and Ash debating the merits of various assault rifles or Kaidan’s… being there. I thought about finding Jacob, but I still wasn’t quite sure about him. After dinner, I checked in to make sure Kasumi was settling in okay.

Dr. Chakwas invited me to share the bottle of brandy with her, and I did. We had a good time reminiscing about the Normandy and talking about our old friends. I’d never thought about what a military doctor’s life must be like – patients come in and then either get better or die. Her attachment to Joker made a lot more sense now.

When we arrived on Omega, we were greeted by a batarian who demanded that we visit someone called Aria in a nightclub called Afterlife. She sounded important, so I figured I may as well go – she may be able to point us in the direction of Mordin or Archangel or Zaeed.

I had to wonder, what the hell kind of stupid name was Archangel anyway?

Aria was… not what I was expecting. Whoever heard of an asari crime lord? Still, she knew Omega in and out, and was able to point me in the right direction on the people I’d come to find. She was quite happy at the prospect of getting rid of Archangel. Honestly, the more she told me about him, the more I liked him. Anyone who can unite the mercs of Omega to try to kill him – and live – sounded like someone I wanted at my back, Cerberus tip or no. Mordin, naturally, was in the middle of a quarantine zone. Salarian STG and his scientific reputation – another guy Cerberus was right about. She couldn’t really point me to Zaeed, though she said if I asked around I’d probably find him easily enough.

The recruiting station for mercs was right there in Afterlife. Easy enough to sign on, although I nearly gave the batarian in charge a few new holes when he called me a stripper. I don’t get that kind of sexism often, but when I do, I do not put up with it. Trust me, nobody would hire me as a stripper. You kind of have to be able to dance. On the way out, we bumped into a kid trying to sign up. I broke his gun for him. Saved his life, probably.

As we left Omega, we ran into a pack of batarians looking for trouble. It didn’t take much to convince them that my squad was more trouble than they wanted.

I could have paid Kenn’s way off the station right away, I suppose. But I hate prejudice. Quarians are just like the rest of us and the way they get treated sucks. I had a word with Harrot, and got him free of the ridiculous deal. Then I gave him the credits he needed to get the hell off Omega.

I was looking for either the quarantine zone or the transport to Archangel when I overheard a prisoner begging for mercy. I went to investigate and found Zaeed. Like Kasumi, he’d made a deal with Cerberus – he helps me, and I helped him take down Vido Santiago. Save a refinery and take down the leader of the Blue Suns? Not a problem.

We headed out to find Archangel. From the sounds of things, he was good, but one person. He was bound to get tired, get sloppy, and get killed. The guy took down a gunship with a sniper rifle. These guys threw a gunship at him and he won.

I was starting to get a suspicion.

While we waited for our distraction team to get called, I had a look around the base. I was able to sabotage a few things to make getting out with Archangel easier. While poking around I found evidence that this uneasy alliance planned to go after Aria next. Even though I planned on taking out most of these guys, I thought she still might like to know. One of the merc leaders told me that Archangel was a turian coward. My suspicion was growing.

The signal was given, and it was quite fun seeing the looks on faces when they realized my team was on Archangel’s side. Getting to Archangel was no problem, and I’m sure the look on my face when I realized I’d been right was something to behold. I’d found Garrus. He looked exhausted, but not too exhausted for me to give him hell. He shot me!

We waited through most of the fighting. Garrus didn’t want to run for it until we had a good chance at actually making it. Unfortunately, my sabotage of the gunship didn’t stop Tarak from taking half of Garrus’s face off. Did stop him from killing Garrus, so there’s that. He was half-dead when I carried him back to the Normandy, but Chakwas was able to patch him up, although he got some sexy new scars out of the deal.

Jacob kept me company while Chakwas was patching up Garrus. He told me about how he stopped a batarian plot to kill the Council, and the Alliance swept him under the rug just like they had me. He was willing to work for Cerberus as long as they kept to the right side of the line. Had to respect him for that.

Garrus was surprised about Cerberus, but he had no problem following me into Hell if I asked. Never has. The forward battery was right off the mess hall, so we grabbed dinner and headed in. I don’t know which he salivated over more, the food or the guns. He told me about the squad he’d put together after leaving C-Sec, a team of twelve that made life just a little less crap for the downtrodden of Omega. Then they were betrayed by one of their own, Sidonis.

“So where are Kaidan and the others? I’d be flattered you came and got me first, but I got the sense you didn’t know it was me until you were actually there,” Garrus said.

“I had my suspicions, but no one knew enough about Archangel for me to have anything concrete. Don't know that there are too many turians good enough with a sniper rifle to take out a gunship, though," I teased. "Wrex is on Tuchanka trying to rally his people. Tali’s got some important mission for her people. I’m told Liara’s working for the Shadow Broker of all things, but I haven’t actually spoken to her yet.”

“Doesn’t exactly sound like Liara,” Garrus said. “Last I heard, she was pissed at the Shadow Broker for something. Then I disappeared to Omega and only heard rumors after that.”

“And Kaidan…” I set my plate aside and leaned against the wall. “No one will tell me. He’s on some super-secret deep-cover communications-blackout mission, according to Anderson. I left a message, but…”

Garrus shook his head. “He was a mess after you died. I didn’t stay on the Citadel long after he came through to tell me what happened, but… well, you know how highly Kaidan thought of you. And then you were suddenly gone. Glad to hear he at least stuck with the Alliance, the thought of him drifting without that kind of discipline and work to get done is scary.”

It was good to hear. “I know. That’s one of the reasons I’m so desperate to see him, to tell him what I’m doing and why before he hears rumors and gets it all wrong. You know what Cerberus did to him, to his unit, on Akuze. I wouldn’t blame him if he refuses to come with me on this one, it’s a lot more personal than Tali hating Cerberus because they tried to bomb a ship in the flotilla, but I don’t want him to think I’ve sold my integrity or my sense of honor.”

“Pretty sure he has enough respect for you to at least hear you out, and I know he’s got to be worried about the missing colonies,” Garrus said, shooting for reassuring. “I’m turian. I know how it is with the military. So I know I’m not supposed to know this. But you two had a pretty damn strong love, and if he won’t at least hear you out, then he’s not the man I thought he was.”

“You knew?” Shit. Who else?

“Yeah. I was pretty constantly around you two, couldn’t help figuring it out. Think Liara did too. Don’t know about anyone else. None of us were going to say anything that might get either of you in trouble or break up the crew.” Garrus paused. “Hey, did Kaidan tell you what happened at his biotic training?”

“Of course he did. That was actually part of the reason I fell for him. Why?”

“I didn’t realize it was him when I met Kaidan, but when I was being considered for Spectre training, my dad told me a story about why doing things the right way is important. Vyrrnus let the situation at Jump Zero get out of control, and one of the kids lost it and killed him because he got sloppy about procedure.”

“That’s… not quite how Kaidan tells it,” I said, but I couldn’t help laughing.

“Sure it is. My dad didn’t demonize Kaidan for it, said he was a kid pushed beyond his limits. He blamed Vyrrnus. And Kaidan’s too good a guy to not acknowledge he lost control that day.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. You ever tell Kaidan about this?”

“Yeah, when he came to tell me about the Normandy. I think it was the first time since then that he’d actually smiled. I’d have told him earlier, but it wasn’t until I went back to C-Sec that Dad asked me what it was like serving with a crazy biotic.” Garrus chuckled. "Of course, I told him Kaidan was nowhere near as crazy as the boss."

I laughed. It was so good to have Garrus back. “Speaking of crazy… I miss the Mako. We had some good times in that thing. And speaking of good times… I want you to stay behind tomorrow. Let the humans handle this one.”

“And you’re asking this because…”

“We’re going into a plague area. Humans are immune. Turians are not. Nothing to do with your injuries.”

“Heh. That’s actually a good reason. Watch your back, okay?”

I checked in on Zaeed before going to bed. He had a lot of trophies lying around. Something about the guy was a little creepy, but he was a good fighter, and I knew I’d need him around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was actually genuinely surprised when Archangel turned out to be Garrus. I don't know why.


	18. Omega 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard returns to Omega to do a little cleanup before heading to the quarantine zone to get Mordin.

I took my team out the next morning. The plan was to swing by and give Aria the datapad, but one of her people intercepted me with a job. They wanted me to protect Patriarch, a krogan Aria kept as a pet of sorts. On the way out, I ran into Helena Blake. To my surprise, she was actually going straight – social work, now. We sorted out the Patriarch situation to Aria’s satisfaction, and between that and the tipoff about the mercs, she was grateful enough to give us the location of some supplies she had laying around.

The drink was supposed to be a quick break, but the batarian scum serving them poisoned me. Removing him felt like a good day’s work.

But the real day’s work began with getting into the quarantine zone. Plague wasn’t enough – Blue Suns were killing those still alive, and vorcha dealing with the remnants. We met a batarian who blamed humans for the plague – humans and vorcha were the only races immune. Others we met said basically the same things – the plague was obviously unnatural and humans didn’t get it.

They pointed us to a clinic on the far side, meaning we had to fight through the Blue Sun and vorcha gang war to get to it. Mordin himself… how was it Kelly put it? Hamster on coffee? (No offense, Fuzzbucket.) But he was brilliant, and if he was running a basically free clinic on Omega, he believed in people. He had all kinds of people at his clinic. Mordin was intrigued by the mention of the Collectors, and struck a deal – we killed the vorcha and got his cure distributed, and he’d come with us. He also hoped we’d find his assistant Daniel and send him back in one piece, preferably living.

Have you ever fought vorcha? They’re obnoxious. We found batarians threatening Daniel. Zaeed didn’t exactly approve when I let them go after they let Daniel go, but I keep my word. It’s one of the reasons that most of my people follow me – they know they can trust me. We found the environmental controls overrun by vorcha who were killing everyone on orders of the Collectors. Idiots. It wasn’t hard to get everything up and running.

Flipping through everything, I found a note from the Alliance. They’d found the wreckage of the Normandy and wanted to put up a memorial, and despite our current friction, they thought I should be the one to determine the site. Alchera was fairly close, not even a mass relay jump away, so I figured I might as well get that done now.

I was a little surprised when Miranda joined Garrus and me for dinner. She wanted to talk to me about Cerberus, see if she could talk me into giving them a second chance. She explained how her father had designed her to be his perfect dynasty, and how Cerberus had taken her in when she ran. I wasn’t exactly going to love Cerberus because they took a superhuman in and gave her a job, but I understood Miranda a little better for it.

Afterwards I checked on Mordin. He was already hard at work on the samples we had, but he had time to tell me about the STG a little. I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that the Spectres were based on the STG. I was a little surprised to find that he worked with Captain Kirrahe – small galaxy! He’d also worked on the genophage, and clarified that sterility wasn’t the intent, ever, but population control.

Jacob seemed a little hostile when I tried to talk to him again. He calmed down when I reminded him how close I’d been with my old crew, and he explained that with Cerberus, you couldn’t always trust that things were what they seemed. I was a little surprised to find he didn’t have family back home, but I was pretty sure by now that I could count on Jacob as an ally against Cerberus when the time came.


	19. Alchera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard deals with some old ghosts.

When we reached Alchera, I wanted to go alone, but Garrus insisted on coming with me.

“I may not have been there for the actual crash, but the Normandy was home for me. I’d like to pay my respects to those who died in the crash, too.”

“You’re right. Won’t hurt to have a friend to lean on, and you’re not Cerberus intruding on the memory. Thanks, Garrus.”

We wandered around, telling each other stories about the ship and crew as we found various bits. We also picked up the dog tags – the families deserved to have at least that much, even if none of the bodies survived.

“So… which of us was driving when this happened?” I asked when we found the Mako. That little bastard had survived the wreck intact, but was so frozen into a pile of rocks that salvaging it wasn’t worth it.

Garrus chuckled. I could tell he’d needed the break as much as I had. “Had to be Ash. This has her fingerprint all over it.”

I’m not the sort to get sentimental or cry over what I’ve lost. I usually get mad and look for something that needs its ass kicked. But when I found Pressly’s journal… I still remember the conversation we had about my non-human crew, but I never realized just how far he’d come around on them. I didn’t cry, but I did take a moment to lean on Garrus. For all we didn’t exactly get along, Pressly was a great XO. I can’t imagine Normandy without him.

I left the monument just outside the cockpit. It just felt right – in so many ways, Joker and Normandy were part of each other. Not like they would come to be with the SR-2, but it was the right place for it.

There were a couple things Cerberus wanted me to check out in a nearby system, so we headed over that way. Our first stop was to recover some stolen data. I’m fairly certain Tim wanted me to send the data to Cerberus, but I sent it to the Alliance. I knew where my loyalties lay. Miranda was pissed, but Garrus got a good chuckle out of it.

Mom sent me a message. I felt like shit not having contacted her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get why this is a solo mission in-game, kind of, but if she's got Garrus and/or Tali there, why wouldn't she bring them?


	20. Bekenstein, Zorya, and Meet the Hammerhead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard takes care of recruiting contracts for Kasumi and Zaeed. Since they're in the area, she goes to retrieve the Hammerhead, and Garrus has a gleegasm.

I figured I should probably make good on the deals with Kasumi and Zaeed. I started with Kasumi’s deal. The plan was to infiltrate Hock’s party, break into the vault, steal the greybox, and get out. First thing that went wrong is that Kasumi was barred from entry. It was funny to hear people talking about me. Seriously, the Alliance used my image in a recruiting campaign, Jacob said. People don’t know what I look like?

Breaking into the vault wasn’t a big deal, not for Kasumi. We just had to get a voiceprint, a password, some DNA, and shut down power to the barriers. I don’t think I want to know what the guard thought I was going into Hock’s quarters for. Eventually we had enough, and we got in. It felt so good to be in my armor again instead of that dress. I don’t mind dressing up every once in a while, but I prefer my dress blues, you know? I kept the dress, though. Thought Kaidan would like it.

Not sure what Hock’s thing for krogan statues was, but he had some really cool stuff. Apparently turians like abstract art. Who knew? Finding the greybox was easy. It was just laying out by some really neat guns. Hock had recognized Kasumi, though, and sent his people to kill us. I can’t go to a party without a firefight breaking out? I have to admit, taking down the gunship was fun. What is it with people I know being so dangerous people feel the need to use gunships to kill them?

The memories on the graybox contained encrypted information that could bring harm to the Alliance, maybe start a war. But it was all Kasumi had left of Keiji, and I could see how much she loved him still. In the end, I reminded her that it was his last wish, and she asked me to destroy it.

Kasumi’s contract handled, I decided to go take care of Zaeed’s. On the way, Mordin caught me, wanting to talk. He told me that he hadn’t just studied the genophage, he’d modified it because the krogans were adapting. I’ll admit, if I hadn’t known Wrex so well, I’d have been a lot more sympathetic. But I knew Wrex. The krogans had a chance, and if evolution was trying to give it to them, they should have been allowed to take it.

Mordin had all kinds of cool stories from his STG days, though. Some he couldn’t share, but the ones he could, Garrus and Jacob and I enjoyed. I was almost starting to get comfortable with my new crew. Miranda kept herself aloof for the most part, but I did have friends. Zaeed wasn’t a friend, exactly, but he had great stories of his time as a merc too.

When we’d blasted through the first round of Blue Suns, that’s when Zaeed chose to tell me that he and the guy we were after co-founded the Blue Suns. He hadn’t been with them for twenty years, not since Vido tried to blow his face off, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him around. Then we found Vido, and I damn near kicked Zaeed off the team. He set the refinery on fire – with the workers inside – just to get vengeance. If it weren’t for the workers trapped in the burning refinery…

You know, same thing happened with Wrex. That may have been what changed my mind, remembering how good a friend Wrex turned out to be despite a bad first impression.

We were here to save the refinery, not to kill Vido. So I let Vido run while I saved the people. Zaeed was… not happy. Not sure if he’d actually shoot me or not, but there was an explosion and Zaeed was trapped under a beam. I considered leaving him there; he was hardly an innocent, and he’s the one who started the fire. But in the end, I couldn’t do it.

While we were in the cluster, one of the tasks I’d been given was to find the MSV Rosalie and her crew. Specifically, the Hammerhead, and Drs. Cayce and O’Loy. The look on Garrus’s face when we found the Hammerhead was pure glee. He called driving it first, and I let him.

Poor Jacob, I don’t think he got any warning about us and our antics.


	21. Prison Ship and Hammerheads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes to pick up the psychotic biotic and ends up having to take down a corrupt prison boss.
> 
> Several small missions come and go, often involving the Hammerhead.
> 
> Shepard discovers she still has at least one friend in the Alliance.

Next on the list of tasks was to pick up a convict. Some sort of biotic prodigy, but beyond that, I didn’t know anything else about Jack. They made the mistake of trying to take my weapons. I offered them one bullet, if they’d just tell me where to put it. Warden Kuril backed down eventually, but it was tense.

The more I heard from Kuril, the less I liked him and his ship. It was high-security prison that wasn’t government, so he could abuse the prisoners however he wanted. Admittedly, the kind of people they kept there weren’t exactly the type anyone would cry over, but still. So I was hardly surprised when he sprung the trap on me. I thought maybe he might have second thoughts about crossing Cerberus, but apparently, he didn’t care.

My ship was the only way off the station, so I didn’t really think too hard before shutting down security. Guards vs. prisoners would keep them busy while I got Jack, and my ship was too well-guarded for anyone to sneak on. Jack turned out to be extremely powerful and pissed off, tearing her way through. We caught up with her at the ship, and convinced her that whatever her feelings on Cerberus, she needed to come with us. We made a deal – she could look at the Cerberus files, and she’d fight with us. Miranda wasn’t happy about it, but this is when I learned the term “Cerberus cheerleader”. At the time, it fit perfectly.

I checked in with Jack to make sure she was settling in comfortably. She’d managed to turn the cargo hold under engineering into a halfway decent cabin. She told me how Cerberus had raised her, torturing her, until she finally escaped. Other than that, she wasn’t interested in talking.

There was some cargo in the area Cerberus wanted, but Eclipse was using mechs to destroy it. One of the worst missions I’ve ever undertaken. It could’ve gone better, but then again, did I really want to put resources in Cerberus’s hands?

I was surprised when the call came in. “Admiral Hackett? Not that I mind, but… should you be talking to me?”

“You did a lot of work for me with the first Normandy, although you could’ve said no any time. I’ve read your reports, and a week or so back we got this data upload. I managed to trace it to an Eclipse base in the Terminus Systems. Figured that was you. Whatever the guys in charge may say, I’m convinced you’re still Alliance in your heart. Don’t know why you’re working with Cerberus. Just glad you’re alive.”

“Cerberus is funding me to investigate the colony disappearances, Admiral. Since the Alliance doesn’t seem to have any interest in it…”

“Fair enough. I’ve been trying to get them out there. Offered to go myself even. I think they’re scared to find out that you’re right and the Council’s wrong and the Reapers are real. But I called to ask: if I tossed some Alliance work your way, would you do it?”

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

The first thing he had for me was to find the MSV Estavanico, lost in the area I was in already. I found it and retrieved what data I could.

Next up was checking into a lead on Dr. Cayce. There were geth in the area. I didn’t mind killing some geth. Not then, anyway. And even if it wasn’t quite the same as the Mako, it was still a chance for me and Garrus to cut loose and be crazy. This time we brought Miranda along. It was hilarious watching her react to some of the stunts I pulled, or threatened to. I had no intention of actually skipping the Hammerhead across the lava.

I went to chat with Jack while we headed to our next destination. She told me about why she was locked up. Lots of death and mayhem. Not quite sure I believe her story about capturing a space station and crashing it into the moon, leading to charges of vandalism from the hanar. Still, I got the sense that under all the psychotic badassery, there was a lot of pain.

The next stop in investigating Dr. Cayce took us to an extremely cold world. Flying the Hammerhead through freezing conditions was extremely tricky. Garrus and I took Jack with us, though, and we were able to really let loose with the crazy. Jack demanded to drive next time. I couldn’t wait to see what she did with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Hackett. He's awesome.


	22. Project Overlord, More Hammerhead, and a Krogan Warlord

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard meets the biggest bastard yet. Aside from Tim.
> 
> Things get crazy with the Hammerhead.
> 
> Mechs get crazy too.
> 
> And Shepard takes on another broken toy to fix up.

I’d been asked to investigate a Cerberus base gone silent. Dr. Gavin Archer claimed a rogue VI had taken over. We shut down the transmission satellite, and then had to go destroy the antennae so the VI couldn’t upload itself offworld. Of course, this meant fighting through the live geth that Archer was experimenting on, because the guy wasn’t enough of a bastard already.

What he’d done was interfaced a live mind with the geth. Now, it’s not actually as bad as it sounds. But he’d stuck his brother into a machine world and then was surprised when it drove his brother mad. Genius. To stop him, we had to fly to the other stations and override the lockdown on the main station David was trapped in.

I made good on the promise to let Jack fly at the power station. I wasn’t disappointed. Good thing, too; we had to do all kinds of crazy things to navigate. On the geth ship, we had to do some more crazy flying to make the geth cannon take out its own shields. Then we had to fight through a bunch of geth.

But at Atlas Station… I couldn’t believe it. Gavin Archer had forced his own brother into the geth neural network because if they didn’t make a breakthrough, Tim was going to shut them down. No wonder David had gone mad. I’m glad Ash wasn’t there to see it; I think she’d have killed him. I don’t have any siblings but I’d like to think I’d do just about anything before sticking them in a machine like this, and worse, leaving them there even after I knew it was torture for them.

I found myself uploaded as well. It was an odd experience, one I never really wanted to repeat. David showed me how Gavin had conceived and carried out the plan. The garbled sounds the VI had been making? David pleading for it to stop. Gavin said he never intended to hurt his brother. I’m pretty sure sticking spikes through his arms and hooks into his eyes to force them to stay open was going to hurt him no matter whether he volunteered or not. I took David to Grissom Academy where he’d be safe from his asshole of a brother.

I had one more hint on the missing doctors, so I figured I may as well go check it out. Yes, I was stalling on going to get the Warlord. I wasn’t too sure about having a krogan warlord unless it turned out to be Wrex, and there was only a small chance Okeer would be that good a guy. The flying wasn’t as crazy as it had been on Aite, but still, we took Jack with us. When we found the research base, we learned they’d found what they were after – under a volcano, naturally. Who does that?

“Well, that’s one for the storybooks,” Garrus said as he skidded the Hammerhead to a stop in the shuttle bay. “Kaidan will never believe I flew this thing out of an active, unstable volcano.”

We learned where Dr. Cayce had gone, and also how the geth were tracking him. He was at a Prothean site and we needed to get there before the geth. The flying part was actually pretty easy – avoiding rocket drones while destroying stationary targets. Inside the base was a little trickier. We found O’Loy’s body – he’d been indoctrinated. The artifact was this big glowing ball – until I touched it. Then it was a heavy but manageably-sized ball. I took it. Why not? It was Prothean, not Reaper. Last I checked, Prothean stuff didn’t indoctrinate anyone.

Jacob was getting to be a pretty good friend. Jack was great for taking on missions, but as soon as we got to the ship, she’d go down to her cave and snarl at anyone who tried to come in. Miranda… I was still having trouble seeing past the Cerberus cheerleader exterior, and she wasn’t even trying to show anything else. Kelly was great in small doses, but she was also a Cerberus cheerleader, so I tried not to let it get too deep a friendship.

I’d been getting messages from people I’d helped, but the message from Toombs scared me. No, I wasn’t afraid that if I ran into him he’d kill me. I was too good for that. But I knew Kaidan had been in contact with him way back when and intended to stay in contact, so if Toombs had heard… maybe Kaidan had too.

We picked up a distress beacon from a wrecked freighter on Neith. It had been transporting mechs from Jarrahe Station. They activated themselves and took the ship down. We traced them back to Jarrahe Station, where the power was down and a VI had taken control. If I never have another station try to kill me… but as it turns out, this wasn’t the origin of the virus.

The krogan warlord was on the way out to the new place to investigate. So I made the call to go get him. Blue Suns. Apparently a Blue Sun leader hired Okeer to build her a krogan army. Hadn’t I just blown up this scenario, from someone a lot scarier? Okay, two years ago, but still. Of course, those krogan never stuck their faces in my chest. That was weird.

Okeer was supposed to be breeding Jedore an army, but he was awfully free with rejecting any krogan who didn’t meet some standard he’d set. As we busted through mercs and krogan, we ran into Rana Thanoptis. She’d been on Virmire, too. Coincidence or pattern? I couldn’t prove anything, and she had helped us, so I let her go.

Okeer had dealt with the Collectors, trading a bunch of krogan for the tech to create a super-soldier. Jedore, the merc leader, chose then to decide to call clean slate on the krogan army. While Okeer readied his prototype for transport, we went to kill Jedore. While we were gone, Okeer killed himself to protect his legacy.

We brought the tank on board. Miranda and Jacob wanted to keep it sealed, send it to Cerberus for testing, but our team was missing a krogan. And I have to admit, I was just plain too curious about what a “pure” krogan was like not to open the tank. I made him respect me pretty quickly, and he named himself Grunt. Turned out, he was a nihilistic krogan. I impressed him with how sure I was of my command, and he agreed to fight for me until he found his own path.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jedore is WAY less scary than Saren. It's not canon, Shepard rolling her eyes at another attempt at "let's breed a krogan army", but it SHOULD BE.


	23. Horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Illusive Man admits to being a fucking bastard who lies. Shepard meets Kaidan on Horizon. Things go... poorly. The fallout nearly causes Shepard to make a very bad decision.

Tim wanted to talk. Horizon had just gone silent, and Kaidan was there.

“Oh, _now_ you know where Kaidan is? I’ve been searching for weeks!” And yet, I couldn't say I was surprised.

Tim didn't seem to get it. “You can tell me off later, Shepard. For right now, you need to get to Horizon. With luck, you can get there before the Collectors leave.”

He was right, of course. But I was pissed. And I took that fury down to Horizon with me, which… may have been part of Tim’s plan, looking back now. We were able to get there while the Collectors were still there. They had husks like the geth had made, but no spikes to make them. So the colonists had to be alive and these were already processed. Grim.

Then we met Delan, the charming engineer who blamed everything on the Alliance in general and Kaidan in specific. And… wasn’t entirely wrong. The Collectors hit this planet hoping to get Kaidan so they could get to me, the Alliance stationed Kaidan here hoping to draw out what was going on, and Cerberus arranged the whole thing with rumors and leaks hoping to get a jump on the Collectors and, I think, Tim wanted me to put Kaidan behind me. Is it still paranoia when there’s every chance you’re right?

Seeing Kaidan again… didn’t go how I’d have liked. Started off well enough, but he was already angry because of the rumors about me. He’d gone through hell thinking I was dead – I got that. I told him I was in a coma, and I couldn’t let him know I was alive, but I brought up who rebuilt me. The Alliance had gotten a tip that Cerberus was behind the abductions and this colony was next, which is why Kaidan was here. He accused me of betraying the Alliance, and him.

Miranda didn’t exactly help matters when she stuck her Cerberus cheerleader routine into our conversation.

“Cerberus is using the threat of a Reaper to manipulate me?” I asked incredulously. “Because Cerberus has the technology to make husks like the ones we saw on Eden Prime. Because Cerberus would ever work with aliens against humanity. I know what Cerberus is and what they’re capable of, Kaidan, and I am looking forward to when I can cut them loose. But you sound like the Council. Remember that? ‘Saren is using the Reapers to manipulate you.’ Grounded Normandy, almost lost the Citadel? I can’t believe you’d go there without at least looking for yourself!”

“Or maybe you are being manipulated, and you won’t look too hard because Cerberus rebuilt you. Or maybe you can’t look too hard. But I know where my loyalties lie, Shepard. I’m an Alliance soldier, and I always will be.” Kaidan turned and started walking off.

“Don’t go, Kaidan. Come with me. I feel wrong out here without you, and I could definitely use someone to help me keep my head straight.”

“No. I’ll never work for Cerberus. Goodbye, Shepard.” He hesitated. “Be careful.” He walked away again, and this time, I didn’t stop him.

I barely bothered stripping out of my armor before getting on the comm with Tim. “You son of a bitch. You set this up. You set Kaidan up. You set me up.”

“I told you I wouldn’t sit and wait while the Collectors and Reapers gathered strength. I suspected they were looking for you. So I planted a rumor that you were alive and with Cerberus. The Alliance reacted exactly as I expected them to. As did the Collectors.”

I think this is when the fantasies began. He took a drag from his cigarette, and I spent the next year coming up with clever ways to use the cigarette in getting my revenge. “Never again, you hear me? No more colonies get hit for your games!”

“That’s why we’re doing this. I’m devoting every resource to finding a way through the Omega-4 relay. Your team needs to be strong, ready to do this and not look back. The same goes for you. Can I assume you’ve put your past relationships behind you?” Tim asked.

“Fuck you. You set this up so that Kaidan and I would meet in the worst possible way so that I could put my past relationship behind me? No. Kaidan is not behind me. Kaidan will never be behind me. Lucky for you, the backfire here is positive. I’m coming back from this mission. I will do whatever it takes to get the mission done and get back here alive, because I am not putting Kaidan through my death again.” I turned around and stormed off… or at least, for about three seconds before I ran into Jacob. He told me he was starting to realize the stakes here, and he wanted to take care of some unfinished business before we left. Fair enough.

Garrus came up to see me that night. “Here. After what happened, I thought you could use this.” He tossed me a bottle of whiskey. “Don’t worry, I brought my own.”

“Heh. Thanks.” I opened the bottle and took a long swig. “Is Kaidan right? Am I overlooking things because Cerberus gave me back my life?”

“Let’s see. You saw for yourself what the Collectors were doing. Reapers or not, they have to be stopped. The husks pretty well confirmed a Reaper connection. The trip through the Omega-4 relay is to stop the Collectors. Every chance you get, you’re telling Cerberus to go fuck itself, even betrayed them once with that data upload to the Alliance. I’d say you’re doing a pretty good job of staying who you are. Not betraying the Alliance. Not betraying yourself. Not betraying Kaidan.”

“Thanks. I’m just… I’m sick of being questioned, of not being believed, of all of this. And from Kaidan, of all people? It was a setup. The Illusive Man wants me focused on the mission instead of on my past. It’s not my past I’m worried about now, it’s my future.”

Garrus came and sat next to me on the couch. “Hey. You and Kaidan will work this out when we get back.”

“He’s got good reason to hate Cerberus, and what if he’s right? How would I know if Cerberus brought me back the way I was or if they made some small changes that led to me being less than the woman he loved?” It was something I was seriously worried about, and had been since I found out what Cerberus had done to me, but now that Kaidan was bringing it up, I couldn't ignore anymore.

Garrus didn't seem to care about it. “I’d know. Like I said, you’re who you were. The problem isn’t you, the problem is Kaidan. He’s not who he was two years ago.”

“Yeah. He’s a guy who watched his girlfriend get spaced and then got ambushed by her two years later. I can’t blame him for being confused, for being angry. But he wouldn’t _listen_.”

We drank in silence for a time. Now, I’m a pretty hard drinker. And usually, I end up happy or crazy or just plain stupid. And a little bit glowy as I start losing control of my biotic fields. But that night, I ended up a sobbing mess. Garrus didn’t seem to mind when I leaned on him.

I’d never had a shoulder to cry on before. I grew up military; I’d trained myself pretty well not to _need_ a shoulder to cry on. It’s the only reason I can come up with for why, once I was out of tears, I pulled Garrus into a kiss.

Once Garrus figured out what was going on, he very gently pushed me away. “Shepard. I’m not letting you do this to yourself. Not now.”

“Why not? You too good for a Cerberus whore, too?”

“No. I’d never actually considered it, but I could see you and me happening. Except for one thing: you’re in love with Kaidan. And despite what happened today, I’m pretty sure he’s still in love with you. I don’t know if this is about you wanting to feel loved or getting back at Kaidan for what he said or you’re just too drunk to know any better. What I do know is that if I let you do this, you’ll hate yourself in the morning. Possibly hate me, too. The last thing you need right now is to lose the support you have. So go to sleep, I’ll tell Joker to set course for Haestrom, we’ll go get Tali and then we’ll go from there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like just about every Shepard/Kaidan shipper, I do not like Horizon. My first playthrough, it broke me so badly I stopped that playthrough immediately after Horizon and made a new Shepard for ME2 and played through that way. (And went Shepard/Garrus with that one.)
> 
> My biggest problems with Horizon: Shepard not even trying to explain that she doesn't trust Cerberus but they're willing to do something about the Collectors, that she's tried working with the Alliance and Council instead but they turned their backs on her, and she HAS been trying to get in contact with Kaidan but wasn't able to. The Illusive Man suddenly knowing exactly where Kaidan is and Shepard doesn't call him on that. Kaidan not getting called out for his comment about Shepard being manipulated with the Reaper threat, after they nearly lost the galaxy because the Council was thinking that way. In short: it's badly-written, and I've always gotten the sense that they wrote it for Ashley and then remembered that oh, yeah, some people would have saved Kaidan instead. With Ash, it's still not GOOD, but it fits her personality better.


	24. Haestrom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tali joins the team! Yay Tali!

Of course, thanks to my long drinking history, I didn’t have the joy of alcohol-induced amnesia. Thankfully since I’m a biotic, I didn’t have too much of a hangover, either. I headed for the forward battery. If I needed Garrus, I could nearly always find him calibrating his cannon. And that sounds much dirtier than I meant it to. “Hey.”

Garrus set down his screwdriver. “You’re awake! How do you feel?”

“I’m sorry I put you in that position last night, and thank you for handling it so well,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good. We’re a few hours out from Haestrom, you hungry?”

“Yeah. I should check in with Kelly, make sure there’s nothing going on I need to know about…”

“No, you should eat breakfast, then check in with Kelly. Come on.”

After breakfast, I wanted to see how Grunt was settling in. Grunt was all right, he just… he wanted a reason to care about things, and he couldn’t find one. I wasn’t sure what I could do to help with that.

I felt really weird about the fact that Miranda was kind of taking Kaidan’s place in shore parties. Like Kaidan, she was both a biotic and a tech genius, and not too shabby with a gun. But, unlike Kaidan, she wasn’t a friend. She was my watchdog. At least she had a reason to be invested in keeping me alive.

Haestrom was really weird. The sun was dying, and direct sunlight was murder on anything electronic. The place was overrun with geth, and it took a long time to find a live quarian. Kal’Reegar. I liked that guy. Then we made contact with Tali, and she was overjoyed to hear me. That was nice. She’d come to get information on why the star was aging faster than it should, and then the geth showed up. She asked me to keep Reegar alive.

Reegar was waiting for us. We had three ways to get to Tali. Left, right, or center. Cover from the geth or cover from the Colossus that was shooting at us. I’ll say one thing for the Collectors: their particle beams kick geth ass. That thing went down fast to the weapon I’d stolen from a Scion on Horizon. Tali was happy to join us now that she’d finished her research, and even happier that I’d saved Reegar.

“There something going on there?” I teased as Reegar headed off with the quarian ship and the data.

“No. Not like that. But speaking of, why’s the Cerberus bitch here instead of Kaidan?” Tali asked.

Garrus stepped in when I walked away, not wanting to go off on Tali for a perfectly innocent query. “Long story. I’ll tell you later. Best not to bring him up for a while.”

“Fair enough. Let’s go.”

When we got back to the ship, Jacob met us to say hello. Tali was abrupt with him, and I couldn’t blame her; he did wear a Cerberus uniform. “Jacob’s all right, Tali. He may be Cerberus, but he’s got a sense of honor. You can trust him. Garrus, obviously. You’ll probably see Jack occasionally since she hangs out below engineering, and she hates Cerberus as much as you do. Maybe more. Grunt just doesn’t give a damn about anything, and Mordin’s all right. I think you’ll like him. Miranda’s the only member of my squad that fully believes in Cerberus, and she’s here as the Illusive Man’s watchdog.”

“Keep Miranda out of my way, then, and we should be fine.”

As she walked away, something else occurred to me. “One other thing, Tali… the Normandy has an AI aboard. EDI. So far she hasn’t but anything but helpful and she’s followed my commands, but you know more about AIs than I do.” Even through the mask, I could feel the horrified glare.


	25. Pragia and the Hugo Gernsback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard takes Jack and Jacob to deal with some old ghosts, and tries to figure out how to deal with hers.

Jack called me down as I was heading to engineering. She’d found the base where she’d been raised and wanted to go blow it to smithereens. It was an abandoned facility, so I figured there was no harm in that.

Tali seemed to love the new Normandy despite its Cerberus origins. She was pissed at the Admiralty Board for getting so many people killed for the Haestrom data, but not enough to distract her. She was still wary about working for Cerberus, and promised to have my back when the betrayal came, whichever way it ended up going.

I stopped by to check on Grunt. Apparently, he’d discovered a hatred for turians. He described this picture from the tank, and I nearly threw up because all I could see was someone doing it to Garrus. He thought I’d be happy that he’d found a reason to care, and I suppose it was better than nothing. I did make sure that Garrus was safe.

Just before we got to Pragia, I checked my messages. Kaidan had written one, and I wanted to write back. But what could I say? I flagged it as unread and left. It was on my mind the whole time we were with Jack.

As we went through the facility, Jack told us stories about what it was like to grow up there. It just kept getting worse. Arena fights where she was conditioned to fight with drugs, she was even able to point out the spot of her first murder. On the other hand, it also sounded like she’d only ever gotten half the story. She didn’t understand why they’d need a morgue, or why the security logs sounded like they cared about Subject Zero’s life.

There was another survivor, Aresh. Like Jack, he’d come looking for answers. He’d brought Blood Pack with him, because it was just too much to ask for that I not have to draw my gun on this one. Aresh wanted to restart the facility. There was no way I was letting that happen. I’m as interested as the next biotic in figuring out how to make our powers stronger, but not by experimenting on kids. Still, he needed to heal in his own way, and killing him wouldn’t help Jack any. We warned him we were about to blow the facility and let him run.

When we got back to the ship, Jacob approached me with a distress signal. It was weird, he said. The ship had been missing for ten years and they were only just now getting the signal. The reason he’d come across this one was that his father was on board. They didn’t have much of a relationship, but he wanted to check it out, if we had time. We did.

I had a letter to write on the way there, though.

_Kaidan,_

_I can understand why you’re upset. Hopefully by now Anderson gave you the message I left with him, so you know I did try to contact you as soon as I could, but seeing me again after two years had to be a shock. For me, it had been a few weeks. Please keep that in mind when you think about the lack of reaction, okay?_

_I haven’t forgotten what Cerberus is. I remember the times we’d walk into some fresh and exciting new hell only to discover Cerberus was responsible. I haven’t forgotten how we swore they were next after Saren and the geth. I haven’t forgotten what they did to you on Akuze, and I don’t blame you for reacting the way you did._

_The thing is, Cerberus is willing to fund a very risky mission. And I’m willing to take it, because it has to be done. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I can’t imagine the Alliance or Council gives a damn what I do as long as I stay out of their space. We’re going through the Omega-4 relay just as soon as we figure out how the Collectors do it safely. No good going through if we die before we can do anything. But there’s a good chance it’s a one-way trip. I’m going after the Collector homeworld, and I can’t promise I’m coming back from that._

_For what it’s worth, I could never forget the night before Ilos. I still haven’t forgiven Joker from cutting off our first attempt at a kiss, not that he knows why I keep complaining about his timing. That night, for the first time since they made me a Spectre, I actually remembered that I have a name other than Commander Shepard. Dr. Chakwas called me the immovable center of the team I always seem to gather around me, and I’m proud to be that, but for one night I didn’t have to be._

_But as you say, a lot has changed in two years. I hope that doctor was nice. I’m still hurt by some of the things you said, and I’m sure you still have your doubts about me and Cerberus. I’m not going to ask you for a promise you can’t keep, and I won’t ask you to come with us. If you change your mind, just call or message me, you’re always welcome on the Normandy. If not, keep yourself safe, okay? I’ll fight a lot harder to come back if I know you’re here to come back to. I’d like to have a do-over on our meeting, but it probably shouldn’t be until I’m back and I’ve told Cerberus to go to hell._

_Shepard_

I saved it to the drafts. Maybe I’d get Tali or Garrus to look over it, tell me if I’d hit the right balance between respecting his space and making sure he knows I still care.

We found the Hugo Gernsback easily enough, but we also found some very disturbing things in the logs and VI memory. They’d done something horrible to the crew, and disabled the beacon for nearly nine years. Things got more disturbing when we actually found some of the crew. The women were passive, almost thralls to “the leader”, while the men were actively trying to kill “the leader” and us because they believed we were helping him.

Turns out, “the leader” was Ronald Taylor. At first, his intentions were good… there wasn’t enough food for everyone to avoid the local stuff, so he reserved it for officers and made everyone else go crazy. Then he started going power-mad, exiling the men. And now that the men had turned violent, he wanted out. Jacob and I were both thoroughly disgusted with him. We called the Alliance to take him into custody, and to help the surviving victims.

Turned out Miranda was the one who sent this to Jacob. Weird.

Hackett forwarded me a tip on merc activity in the area. We were there, so I figured we should check it out. On the way out, I reread the letter I’d written for Kaidan. Decided to send it. I didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect, but I needed to try.


	26. Sidonis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard takes Garrus to the Citadel and helps him get his revenge. Along the way, she gets to point and laugh at an old nuisance, so bonus points for that.

We found that the Blue Suns were responding to a call from my least-favorite corporation, ExoGeni. They’d found something they needed transported. It turned out to be a Prothean artifact. I’d gotten used to Prothean things triggering visions, but always before, I’d come to with Kaidan holding me up. This time, it was Garrus. Honestly, that was more disorienting than the Prothean artifact had been. While there, we found orders to meet another group on a derelict freighter.

Which reminded me, we had some virus-infected mechs to check out. I’d forgotten, what with Horizon. We were well on our way when Garrus came up to my quarters. “Shepard. I need your help.”

“Of course. What’s going on?”

“You remember Sidonis?”

“The bastard that got your squad killed and made you into Archangel?”

“Yeah, him. He was seen on the Citadel, in the company of a criminal named Fade. An old friend at C-Sec tells me Fade is an identity changer. I figure if we find Fade, we can put enough fear into him to make him give up Sidonis’s new identity.”

“Sounds like a plan. What do you plan to do when we find Sidonis?”

“Sidonis owes me ten lives. Sadly, he only has one I can take.”

I wasn’t surprised. But then, this wasn’t like Dr. Saleon. This time, Garrus acknowledged it was vengeance, plain and simple. But he needed this, and I knew it. Before, I could teach him a lesson by stopping him from killing. This time, all I’d do was leave things unresolved. I knew perfectly well I’d never forgive someone for betraying me and getting my squad killed. I’ve never forgiven Saren for making me leave Ash to die. That just left one question. “Where do we find Fade?”

“Citadel, Zakera Ward. I’ll arrange a meeting in a warehouse there. And Shepard… thanks.”

“Anything for you, Garrus.” I pulled him into a hug and kissed his mandible. He gave me an odd look, so I explained, “It’s considered appropriate among family and close friends.”

“Fair enough.”

We got to the Citadel and met Fade. Well, we met his associate. After Garrus put the fear of archangels into him, or at least of one, he told us where to find Fade. And that Fade was our old friend Harkin. “You know, Garrus, this job just keeps getting better.”

Fade ran like the coward he was, hiding behind mechs and Blue Suns. As we headed into the final trap, I checked in on Garrus, made sure he knew what he wanted and the consequences. He was good with things. And Harkin was a criminal, working with the Blue Suns. Shoot on sight was pretty much the policy for that type. So I didn’t bat an eye when Garrus went for the cheap shot, except to wonder if it worked on turians too.

Harkin arranged a meeting, and then Garrus shot out his kneecap. I probably could have stopped him, but… okay, maybe my dislike of Harkin made me behave badly, too. And it wasn’t like I had Kaidan around to be the angel on my shoulder reminding me of the woman I wanted to be. Garrus was tense, I got that, and I wished I could help more than just getting Sidonis in line for his shot.

“Why didn’t you get out of the way when I told you to?” Garrus asked when it was over.

“I told him who I was and why I was there. I wanted him to know why he was going to get a bullet in his brain. You got your shot, and he died afraid and knowing who killed him. Isn’t it better that way?”

Garrus stared at me in disbelief. “Thanks, Shepard,” he eventually managed. “I guess that is better than just shooting him. He wasn’t always a terrible guy, you know.”

“You considered him a friend. You’ve got better judgment than that.” I searched his face, making sure I didn’t see any signs that he regretted it. “We done here?”

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know you can paragon it all the way through and not let Garrus take the shot, but that didn't feel right for this Shepard. She's mostly paragon, but one of her few berserk buttons is fucking with her crew, so she completely understands why Garrus wants Sidonis dead.


	27. Collector Ship

When we got back to the ship, Kelly told me that Tim was waiting to brief me on something. Wonderful. Garrus promised he’d have whiskey in the forward battery waiting for me if I came out spitting mad, like usual. 

Tim had found us a Collector ship. The turians had crippled it – somehow – but were destroyed in the process. This was a great opportunity, but there was a flashing neon sign and Kaidan’s voice screaming in stereo that this was a trap. Still, it was a chance at Collector data, and I don’t have a reputation for being reckless because I sit on my ass and wait for committees to investigate and file reports. I said we’d go.

Jacob and Tali crashed drinking night. Jacob wanted to blow off some steam about his father, and after what we’d seen, I couldn’t blame him. Garrus was both celebrating a mission completed and holding a memorial for the ten guys Sidonis had gotten killed. But Tali… she’d seemed morose all night, and it took a while to get her talking.

“The Admiralty Board has charged me with treason. That’s all I’ll know until I get back there. If I’m convicted, I’ll be exiled. I’ll never see the flotilla again.”

“Wha… Tali, no one who knows you could ever believe you’d betray the fleet,” I tried to reassure her.

Tali shook her head. “They don’t lay these kinds of charges unless they’ve got enough evidence to likely convict. It’s too big a deal.”

Garrus moved his chair around until he was right next to her and could pull her in for a hug. “And you have no idea what it is you’re supposed to have done? It’s not because of working on the same ship as Cerberus, is it?”

“No. If Shepard were quarian they might accuse her of treason for working with Cerberus, but only the captain is responsible for who ends up on the crew. I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done!”

“Things like this happen often?” Jacob asked.

“No. It has to be something big, something that betrays the whole fleet, not just one ship. The last person to be accused was pardoned posthumously after she did a suicide run at the pirates who had gotten fleet defense schematics because of her. I hope I don’t have to do something that drastic.”

“You’ll always have a place here, Tali. I know it’s not with your people, where you belong, but at least they can’t take away everything,” I promised. “When do we need to get you to the fleet for trial?”

“The sooner the better. We need to go to this Collector ship before the turians catch on or they fix it up, but after that… I can get transport…”

“No, you can have your friends at your back,” Garrus said, glaring at me as if daring me to contradict him. “You stood by us through a million things with Saren, we can stand by you at your trial.” I nodded my agreement. We weren’t abandoning Tali.

As soon as we got close to the ship, I started getting a bad feeling. Apparently the turians had disabled the ship without causing hull breaches or mass effect field distortions. EDI quickly figured out that it was the same vessel as the one from Horizon. So maybe the defense towers had done something. More importantly, we should be looking for survivors.

So, naturally, we come across empty pods and piles of corpses. Then we found a Collector in one of the pods. EDI investigated, and DNA analysis showed that Collectors were Protheans. I wondered how long Liara would be bouncing when we told her. We found a lot more pods, although there were no life signs.

Joker had a hunch, and EDI confirmed it: this ship is the same one that killed the Normandy and me. “Something doesn’t feel right, Commander.”

“Something hasn’t felt right since the Illusive Man told me about this. Now the only question I have is if the Collectors set this trap, or Cerberus.”

“Why would Cerberus do that?” Miranda asked. “You could die here, defeating the whole point.”

“I don’t know. Just can’t shake the feeling that your boss’s story doesn’t quite add up. Let’s go.”

We found so many pods, the only logical conclusion was that they were going to target Earth. We found a command console, and that’s when Miranda pointed out we hadn’t seen any Collector bodies, except the one in the pod. She’d finally come around to realizing something was wrong here. A minute later, it was impossible to miss. The Collectors were coming at us with weapons, and EDI was in a cyberwarfare battle tasking her to her limits.

We survived, EDI got the data, and confirmed my suspicions. Tim knew it was a trap and sent us in anyway. Garrus made a joke about betrayal and attempted murder, while Miranda refused to believe it. Then the ship started powering back up and we had to blast our way through Collectors to one of the last-second daring escapes we do so often.

Tim wasn’t even apologetic. He didn’t care. He was confident in my abilities and knew EDI would pull an AI ex machina if we needed it. The information we recovered was valuable, but there had to have been another way. Tim then dismissed my fury at him as a “petty grudge”. This wasn’t a petty grudge. This was boiling over rage. He wanted me focused on the mission? Then he better stop pissing me off at every turn.

At least we did learn something. The Collectors had a special IFF system that made it possible to jump through the mass relays into the center of the galaxy. And he thought he had a lead on where to get one. A derelict Reaper.

Well, screw that, I still had a team to build. We weren’t ready, and after the last derelict ship Tim had sent us to, I wasn’t about to jump into the fire without having as strong a team as I could at my back.

Once EDI had the team together, I tried to explain. “The Illusive Man knew it was a trap. But we needed data from the ship, and he had faith in us to get ourselves out. We did learn something useful – we need to get a Reaper IFF. I’m about at my bullshit limit, so we’re going to take some time, build the team, before we go get it. Those of you who don’t trust Cerberus and have been questioning why we’re here, I hope you understand I share those concerns and it seems like every time I do something for this mission they grow. Those of you who do trust Cerberus… may I suggest you take a long hard look at the last couple missions we’ve done for them and ask yourselves the hard questions.” I gave Miranda a pointed look. “Dismissed. Joker, set course for the Migrant Fleet.”

Once everyone was gone, I went back to my cabin to check my messages. As I’d hoped, Kaidan had responded.

_Hey Shepard._

_Leave it to Cerberus to resurrect you from the dead just to send you on a suicide mission, huh? I know you’re thinking it would’ve been better if I’d never found out you were alive, because there’s a good chance I’m going to lose you again on this one. Don’t. Eventually I’d have found out from Anderson, or Garrus, and then I’d have gone through exactly what I did on Horizon except without you being there to defend yourself. I think I’d have lost you in a worse way._

_I can’t come with you. I wish I could, but I can’t. So tell me about this team you’re building, huh? Try to convince me you’ve got people who can replace the old team from the old Normandy. I know Garrus is with you, and that’s about the only reason I’m going to be able to sleep until you tell me you’re back from this._

_Hackett’s got me working directly for him now. Special operations. Obviously I can’t tell you what I’m doing, but I think you’d approve. Apparently, he heard what happened on Horizon and thinks the Alliance did us both wrong. Scuttlebutt says he and Udina nearly came to blows._

_Speaking of Udina, no, I didn’t get to hear the message you left with Anderson. Anderson told me you left one, that he had it ready and waiting to give me the second I was done with the mission debriefing, but Udina found it and deleted it. Honestly, it’s probably just as well. I’m not sure I’d have listened to it, or if I did, that I would actually have_ listened _to it, you know?_

_There’s a lot that I want to say to you, but I can’t for one reason or another. So here’s the deal. You’re going to come back from this suicide mission, and get to the Citadel, and we’re going to have lunch together at Apollo’s so that we can try the whole talking to each other thing again. Got it?_

_Kaidan_

There was a lot in there to digest, and by the fifth time I’d read it, I was still not quite sure where we stood. But then, that was probably one of those reasons he couldn’t say some of the things he wanted to. I started to reply, but changed my mind in favor of sleep. I didn’t quite know what to expect from Tali’s trial, but if I were called on as a witness or something, I wanted to be at my best.


	28. The Migrant Fleet and Various Mercenaries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and Tali stand for Tali's trial. They retake the Alarei from the geth and Shepard does some shouting.

Tali had told a lot of stories about the fleet, but even so, I wasn’t prepared for the sheer crowding when we docked with the Neema. Her captain met us, and broke the news that the charge was bringing geth to the fleet. Tali said she only sent parts and pieces, that she’d checked to make sure nothing could activate itself.

Then we met Admiral Shala’Raan. She was a close friend of Tali’s mother, so would be recusing herself along with Rael’Zorah. She’s the one who told us that Tali’Zorah vas Normandy was my crew and therefore I was the one who would speak for her. Which was bad. Not because of me personally, because I wasn’t quarian.

Admiral Zaal’Koris made a lovely first impression. He was the one who had her name changed, and then he tried to get me thrown out. Honestly, I don’t think Koris expected me to be willing to fight for Tali. He then told her that geth had taken control of the Alarei, the ship her father was on, and it was assumed he was dead along with everyone else on the ship.

I lost my temper. Ambushing Tali like this was a cheap legal maneuver, the kind Raan had told me didn’t happen. Tali suggested we take back the Alarei, and the admirals agreed to let us try.

Tali suggested we talk to the admirals to get a better sense of what the hell was going on. I agreed. Admiral Han’Gerrel seemed sympathetic, but it was hiding his desire to start a war with the geth. Despite first impressions, I actually kind of liked Admiral Koris the more I heard about and from him. He acknowledged that the quarians had done wrong by the geth too, and that’s why he was after Tali. I had a pretty good idea how to proceed after we got back from the Alarei now. We also talked to Kal’Reegar and Veetor’Nara, who had both done what they could to help Tali. Admiral Daro’Xen creeped me out. She didn’t care about the war, she just wanted to study geth.

We took a shuttle to the Alarei. Sure enough, there were a hell of a lot of geth. The logs we found pretty clearly indicated that they were doing some kind of experiments on them, that ended up with the geth networked and able to take over the ship. There were signs he may have been activating the geth deliberately, testing ways around their ability to reprogram themselves.

We found Rael’Zorah. His body, anyway. Bastard’s final words for his daughter were how to clean up his mess. Garrus and I both hugged Tali; she needed it badly. She hadn’t just lost her father. She’d lost her belief in her father, the chance to ever truly make him proud. I’d never met Rael’Zorah, but I hated the man. And that was before we found the proof that Tali was innocent, because Rael had lied to her by omission, never telling her about the war crimes he was committing.

Tali begged me not to use the evidence at the trial. She knew the stakes, she knew what it could mean, so I respected her wishes. Of course, there was nothing stopping me from calling the admirals idiots and giving them a shouting-at I understand their ears were still ringing from six months later. I just wish they’d listened to me a little better.

Tali was cleared of all charges, and we didn’t have to implicate her father. Still, I wasn’t surprised when we ended up having drinking night in the forward battery again. To my surprise, Jack crashed this one. She opened up a little, told us about her past. She left early, though. Which was good, because Tali didn’t start talking much until after it was just me and Garrus with her. Apologizing for dragging us into quarian politics, talking about her father.

Both of the other people who’d been suggested as team members were on Illium, so that was our next stop. On our way out, though, Hackett called in a tip on Eclipse activity nearby. Went to check that out first. Then there were Blood Pack nearby, so we went to check that out too.

Somewhere in between the mercenary killing, I found time to write back to Kaidan.

_Kaidan,_

_Feel free to say I told you so. The Illusive Man set me up. The Collectors set a trap for me, and he threw me right into it. If I weren’t so convinced that we could do this, I’d be on the Citadel now looking for a good café to have lunch. We got out safely, with valuable information, but I’m still seeing red every time I see the next job in the files. Figure we shouldn’t go to a derelict Reaper if I can’t think straight, so I’m helping my team out with some things._

_Tali’s with us now, too. She was gathering data for the fleet and the mission went south, killed nearly all of her team. She’d wanted to join me back on Freedom’s Progress, Cerberus or no, and now that she’d finished her responsibility to the fleet there was no reason she couldn’t. And then the admirals accused her of treason so they’d have a forum to fight about whether they should go to war against the geth. Tali hadn’t actually done anything wrong, so when I called them out on it in the middle of the trial – right after they’d declared us dead from retaking a fleet ship that had been overtaken by geth, we’d been there two whole hours – they were so ashamed of themselves that they ended the whole farce._

_Mostly on missions, I take Garrus and Miranda. Miranda’s the woman who was with me on Horizon. Jack calls her a Cerberus cheerleader and it fits, but she’s also the person who spent two years bringing me back to life, so I’m pretty sure she’ll work hard not to have to do it again. Jack is… she’s a Cerberus project. Probably not born by Cerberus design, but in a Cerberus holding cell since she was little. Her experiences there make what you’ve told me about Jump Zero sound like a trip to Hawaii. They experimented on biotic children so they could turn Jack into some sort of super biotic. She’s the strongest I’ve ever seen, and that’s not “for a human.” She’s as good as any asari._

_Haven’t seen Wrex, but I do have a krogan on my team. He was grown in a tank and aside from hating turians, doesn’t really give a damn about anything. He thought I’d be happy he hates turians. I can see his point, at least he cares about something, but… I’m kinda fond of turians, myself._

_Remember Kirrahe? I have a retired salarian STG guy working for me. His name’s Mordin, and he’s the one who developed the tech we used on Horizon so that we weren’t hit by the seeker swarms. He also did a lot of work on the genophage. Kelly describes him as a hamster on coffee, and it's not a bad description._

_Kelly's my yeoman. She seems nice enough, but she's a Cerberus believer so I'm kind of keeping my distance._

_Jacob quit the Alliance after they tried to sweep me under the rug. Same thing had happened to him – he saved the Council from a batarian assassination plot, and the Alliance slapped a medal on him and did everything they could to keep anyone from finding out. He’s a stand-up guy. He’s got some issues with some of the things Cerberus has done, but at least for now, he believes in the mission._

_Zaeed is one of the founders of the Blue Suns. His partner turned on him and had him shot in the face. He survived and is royally pissed off about it. His merc stories rival Wrex’s. But he’s a loose cannon – I don’t trust him, and I don’t feel comfortable with him at my back. See, we got a lead on Vido Santiago, the partner… and Zaeed set a refinery on fire with the workers trapped inside to get him. We saved the workers, but Santiago got away. Then a piece of burning debris fell on Zaeed and I was able to explain to him slowly and carefully how things are done on my ship. Amazing what a man will listen to when his other choice is being left to burn to death._

_I think you’d like Kasumi. She’s a genius, can break her way into anything. She spends so much time hiding, though, that I haven’t really gotten a chance to know her at all._

_So that’s my team, so far. I’m on my way to Illium to recruit a couple of other people if I can – a drell assassin and an asari justicar, whatever the hell that is._

_I know what you mean about not being able to say things. And I get why you can’t be here, but I wish you were. Stay safe. If you see Udina, tell him to fuck off for me._

_Shepard_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say, the "crowding" on the Migrant Fleet wasn't nearly as bad as I'd pictured from Tali's description in ME1.
> 
> If Shala'Raan has to recuse herself because of her close friendship with Tali's mother, why doesn't Han'Gerrel have to recuse himself because of his history with Rael'Zorah?


	29. Illium Part 1

When we finally docked at Illium, I heard that Liara was there. Of course I went straight to see her. Well, tried to. I got stopped by some old friends – an asari in service to the rachni queen, and Gianna Parisini. Gianna roped me into helping her bust a corporate thief. Just like old times.

It was great to see Liara again. I was really surprised when she said she couldn’t come with me, but I agreed to help her with some hacking she needed. She’d changed a lot in two years – using her mother’s threat against me to intimidate some guy. She also told me where to find Thane and Samara. It sounded like Thane would be the more likely to disappear, so I decided to go after him once I got the hacking done. While I was hacking, I ran into Shiala, here on behalf of the Feros colonists. They’d signed a bad contract with a xenophobic asari, and I convinced the asari to let them out of it. Of course, then Shiala made it awkward by hitting on me.

Thane was on a hit – Nassana Dantius. I remembered her. I killed her sister and she thanked me for it. Seryna offered to help me get in. She wanted to see Nassana go down. I’m no assassin, but Nassana sounded more and more like the kind of person I would shoot on principle, so I didn’t have much objection. For example, she was the kind of person who rounded up her night workers with mechs and started shooting.

Okay, so throwing the merc out the window for giving me sass isn’t one of my finer moments. I wasn’t getting an answer from him one way or the other, which meant I’d end up killing him, but I probably should’ve given him a chance to change his mind. I don’t care. I figure saving the lives of a bunch of workers trapped in the tower balances it out. We found a merc who’d been shot through the head without even hurting the salarians he was threatening. Garrus admired the handiwork.

We found Nassana, and she jumped to the conclusion I was there to kill her. Well, I can’t say I didn’t want to, but this wasn’t my style and I was kind of offended she’d make that mistake. She offered to pay me to go away, but… I wasn’t after her.

Thane wasn’t what I expected. He took out the guards easily enough, but when he killed Nassana, he took the time to pose her as if she were resting and to say prayers over her body. For himself, apparently. He pointed out just how crazy I sounded for asking him to do this, but agreed anyway. He was dying, and he was happy to do something good while he still could.

Talking with Thane was interesting. I’d never met a drell before, and he told me a lot about their religion and their relationship with the hanar. He also told me more about his illness.

The mission had taken most of the night, and I still had a justicar to find. I got Thane settled on the ship and headed back out. First stop was Liara’s, to drop off the data I’d gathered for her. She had another mission for me, involving tracking down an operative who turned out to be her assistant Nyxeris. Turns out that despite what Tim told me, Liara was looking to take down the Shadow Broker. Tim also neglected to mention that Liara was the one who gave me to Cerberus in the first place.

While I was looking for the data, I ran into Conrad Verner. Dressed in N7 armor and trying to sound like a badass. I appreciated the bartender’s complete lack of interest in it. I arranged things so that he thought he’d finished the job he was on and then convinced him to go back to his life. The bartender was grateful and we had a good chat.

The tracking officer pointed me to a spaceport, where a murder had just taken place. It could have gotten ugly. The detective had been ordered to take Samara into custody, and Samara could only comply for a day before she’d have to kill her way out. I don’t get her code, but she takes it very seriously.

Anyway, we made a deal: I’d get her the name of the ship her fugitive left on, and she’d come with me to go get the Collectors. Shouldn’t be too hard to blast enough Eclipse mercs to make them talk. Pitne For, the deceased’s business partner, gave me a passcard to their base. We ran into Elnora hiding behind a data terminal. She claimed that she didn’t know what the Eclipse were really like, but that was bullshit. She was in Eclipse uniform, and you don’t get one of those on Illium until you’ve murdered someone on behalf of the gang.

Sure enough, she was responsible for the death of the volus. Not that I cared about him – turns out, he and Pitne For were smuggling red sand. Which I learned when one of the crates exploded and I inhaled some. Ugh. At least it wasn’t as bad for me as it was for Niftu Cal, who’d taken so much drug – involuntarily – that he was high enough to think he was a biotic god. The great biotic wind.

We found the name of the ship. The detective was thrilled to see us: we’d solved her murder, found evidence that Pitne For was a criminal, and found a way to get Samara to leave peacefully. Before we did, though, Samara swore an oath that let her put my orders ahead of her code. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be a problem, but still, I was grateful she thought of it.


	30. Illium, Part 2

I was about to tell Joker to leave Illium when Miranda called me. She told me about her sister, Oriana, and how she’d gotten him away from their crazy father. Now her father was closing in on her, and she needed to move Oriana and her new family. They were here, on Illium, and she wanted to make sure everything went right. I agreed; this was the first time I’d actually seen Miranda acting anything but in complete control.

Before we left, though, I had time to check my messages.

_Shepard,_

_WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN DERELICT REAPER?_

_Sorry. But seriously, a derelict Reaper? Right after your boss pulled that kind of stunt? Are you insane?_

_Okay, actually, I already knew you were. I’m glad to hear Tali’s back with you. I assume you and Garrus already told her about Horizon. I can’t imagine any other reason I’ve got a message with the subject line “What is wrong with you, bosh’tet?” Some of the others you told me about sound like great people, and I hope I’ll get the chance to meet them when you bring them home from the relay. I’m worried about Miranda, and of course Zaeed. I guess if you need an assassin, a drell is a good choice – I worked with one once, back on Illium before I joined the Alliance. I was really surprised by his sense of honor. Some hanar belief about assassins being weapons aimed by those who employ them._

_I ran into your mother the other day. That was awkward. I have no idea what she knows or suspects about me. She asked if I’d heard you were still alive and I told her we’d talked, but that I couldn’t join up with you because of my own work. She seemed to understand and accept that. I didn’t mention that we’ve kept in contact._

_You know I’m not going to get a good night’s sleep until you tell me that derelict Reaper actually was derelict and you made it off safely, right? I swear, that thing scares me more than your trip through the Omega-4 relay._

_Kaidan_

Miranda kept giving me funny looks when I burst into laughter at inappropriate times when we went to meet her contact. Garrus, too, but he knew he’d get an explanation out of me sooner or later.

You find the strangest things just lying around when you’re curious like me. Like, for instance, a note about smuggling happening that happened to mention the victim’s name that you can forward. Or salarian genetic data that a family needs for reproductive negotiations. Or lost trinkets. Usually, you find the owner and give it back. Sometimes you get stopped by large krogan who want to pass on thanks.

Eclipse was after Oriana. Because of course they were. It was rather satisfying twisting that smug merc’s head off his shoulders as he was threatening us and taking out his men in less than thirty seconds. There’s a reason I’m friends with Garrus Vakarian. I was worried about what the captain said about Miranda’s friend Niket not helping us out, though.

As it turns out, I was right to. Miranda was so sure that all the things we heard pointing to Niket having betrayed her were wrong, that there was a mistake, but he had turned. He didn’t think it was right for Miranda to have taken Oriana from their father. I wasn’t sure about that, but I did know that if Oriana and the family didn’t know, telling her now could only cause pain. Miranda wanted to kill Niket, but I stopped her. The mercenary captain did it anyway.

“And so he dies anyway. What was the point?” Miranda asked.

Garrus and I exchanged amused looks. “Niket was your friend, Miranda. You’d have regretted killing him. Trust me, I know,” Garrus said.

“Do you regret…?” I asked.

“No. Sidonis was different. No one was dead because of Niket, and he never meant to me what Niket did to Miranda. Killing him was the right thing to do.”

“What matters here is that your last memory of Niket isn’t putting a bullet into him. You won’t see that every time you close your eyes. You’re human, Miranda, just like the rest of us.”

“I’m not,” Garrus said, and Miranda actually smiled at that.

“Come on, I want to make sure nothing else happens to Oriana.” Miranda led us to the terminal, where the family was waiting for their transport. I encouraged her to go talk to her sister, get to know her. She was hesitant, but eventually, she did.

We’d been back on the ship half an hour when Joker called to tell me Miranda and Jack were feuding. I don’t even want to know why Jack had picked now to try to get Miranda to admit that what Cerberus did to her was wrong. Maybe she thought Miranda had changed. I’d thought that. But it was the same old Miranda: it wasn’t really Cerberus because they’d gone rogue. Still, Miranda had changed somewhat. She’d thawed quite a bit, at least where I was concerned.


	31. Side Quests and Back to Omega

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard does a bit of cleanup work and then heads to Omega to help corral Samara's wayward daughter.

A news story I’d heard on Illium had reminded me about the infected mech issue we’d dealt with a while back, and I told Joker to take us to the facility. As expected, Garrus tracked me down on the way out there. “All right, Shepard. What’s so funny that you’re bursting into laughter for no apparent reason in the middle of a nightclub?”

“You’re not going to believe this.”

“Try me.”

“Kaidan ran into my mother on the Citadel.”

“And your mother mentioned this to you?” Garrus looked confused. He knew Mom and I didn’t talk much, and that she’d have no reason to think enough of running into a former crewmember of mine to tell me.

“No. Kaidan did. He… after Horizon, he sent me an apology. We’ve been writing to each other ever since.”

As I expected, Garrus looked caught between sympathy and anger. “And?”

“And… I don’t know, Garrus. I still love him, and from his letters I’m pretty sure he still loves me. But he hurt me bad on Horizon, and I know he still feels betrayed that I would work with Cerberus no matter what my reasons. And that’s not the kind of thing we can work out through letters.”

“Good. Make him work for it.” Garrus chuckled. “Kind of funny how you’re helping all of us tie up some loose ends while leaving yourself the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, well… you know I’ve never been distracted by Kaidan on a mission, not even Ilos or Virmire. And coming back to work things out with him just gives me more motivation to survive it. On the other hand, if you were living through the mission so you could get your revenge on Sidonis, that would say something really terrible about you.”

“How much have you told him about the mission?”

“He knows the plan. So he knows it’s suicide. But, hey, I survived dying once, maybe I can do it again, right? I think he had a heart attack when I told him the Illusive Man wants us to go explore a derelict Reaper, though.”

“Heh. The Collectors can only kill you, even a derelict Reaper might be able to indoctrinate you?”

“I don’t even know if he’s thought about that. He just said he was worried.”

“Well, tell him I owe him a beer and an ass-kicking when we get back.”

_Kaidan,_

_Garrus says hi. Thinking about you and Mom running into each other… I couldn’t hold back the laughter. Which meant Garrus was going to need an explanation._

_All I ever told Mom about you was that you were a member of the Normandy crew and one of the ones I knew I could count on, whether I needed advice, backup in a firefight, or help getting my foot out of my mouth or my head out of my ass. She’s had her own commands, she knows how valuable people like that are. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of you, it’s just that she’s a career officer and a believer in regs, you know? I don’t know that she’d actually bust her own daughter, but I thought we had all the time in the world to decide when to take that risk._

_Would you believe that Garrus knew about us? He never said anything so we wouldn’t get in trouble if someone overheard._

_I ran into Liara on Illium. She’s not working for the Shadow Broker, she’s hunting him. She’s changed so much since the Normandy. Promise not to hate her for this – she’s the one who gave me to Cerberus. Before that, the Shadow Broker had me, and he was going to give me to the Collectors. Given the options, Cerberus is the better one, wouldn’t you say? She’s not the innocent scientist we picked up on Therum anymore. I haven’t made up my mind whether she’s better or worse for it._

_On the other hand, Conrad Verner is still the same idiot he used to be. He was on Illium too, wearing replica N7 armor, dropping my name and telling people he’d worked for me. I was able to convince him to go home. For a moment I thought about inviting him onto the Normandy and then locking him up somewhere he couldn’t do any damage, but even I’m not_ that _crazy._

_Get some sleep. I’ll send you a message before I go to the Reaper, and the first thing I’ll do afterwards is write to tell you I’m safe._

_Shepard_

The mech factory was a nightmare. The thing about mech factories is that there are a lot of mechs there, and the virus made them all hostile. Eventually, I got reckless – yes, me, reckless, I know – and just made a run for the controls to shut them down.

We also had a Blood Pack investigation to clear out, so that was up next. Aside from dealing with vorcha, it wasn’t too bad. We got to blow something up, that’s always fun for Garrus.

Then there was the ship the Blue Suns had taken over. That was fun. Two groups of Blue Suns stabbing each other in the back. They might have had a chance if they’d taken us together, but no, they just had to try to steal the cargo from each other. Of course, that wasn’t the end of the Blue Sun thing, there was a base they were coming from that we needed to go wipe out.

First, though, Samara came to me. She’d tracked Morinth to Omega, and since we were so close anyway, would it be possible to go get her? She told me about Morinth – a beautiful, deadly, perfect killer. Apparently she twisted her prey until they literally couldn’t resist her, and then killed them with the asari meld thing. A genetic defect called Ardat-Yakshi.

Aria pointed us to the latest victim’s apartment. On the way there, we bumped into a pair of salarians looking for someone to bring them packages from drop sites. Honestly, I didn’t see what it could hurt to play courier. We talked to the girl’s mother, who was grief-stricken but able to confirm that Morinth was a new friend and that Nef fit the profile Samara had for Morinth’s victims.

So of course the plan was to use me as bait. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about letting an asari killer seduce me. We knew some things about her from Nef’s journal, so I was able to play the part well enough. Fortunately, all I really had to do was be myself except for the part where I run away from people hitting on me. Letting Morinth seduce me was… it was close. I was able to resist her, but it took a lot out of me.

Samara showed up and they fought to a standstill. Morinth offered to come with me, if I’d just kill Samara. I could still feel the pull to her, and for a moment, I honestly didn’t know whose arm I was reaching for. But I grabbed Morinth’s, giving Samara the upper hand. Samara was a killer, but she was a killer with a sense of honor who didn’t mess with people’s heads.


	32. Blue Sun Mopup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tali talks to Shepard about the results of the trial and quarian persecution, Shepard has to choose between a colony and a bunch of lives, and more Blue Suns die.

There was a message from Kaidan waiting when I got back. I told Joker to set course for the base and settled in to read.

_Shepard,_

_You’re unbelievable, you know that? Conrad Verner? If he were out trying to be you, he’d be dead within three days. There’s no way I’ll believe you on that._

_Good to hear Liara hasn’t sold out to the Shadow Broker. I… don’t quite know how to feel about her giving you to Cerberus, but you are right, better them than letting you go to the Collectors. I can’t imagine the Collectors would’ve spent years putting you back together in any form, let alone trying to make you just as you were._

_Garrus wrote me a lovely message himself. Sounds like the two of you have really gotten close out there. It’s good to know you’re well-cared-for on this mission. That you’ve got a team that would die for you._

_My mom called last night. I had told her about us, after the memorial service for you. It’s like with Garrus, there was no way she wasn’t going to get it out of me, so I might as well just admit things up front. She’d heard some terribly garbled rumors about you – she actually seemed to think that you were leading Cerberus in its attacks on our colonies to try to provoke a war with the Council races. Or maybe just the turians. Or the batarians. When I could finally get a word in I did my best to tell her that you were not attacking our colonies and the only war you wanted to fight was the one against the Collectors and the Reapers, and I’m hoping she’ll believe me over her gossip network, but you never know._

_How anyone could think you’d try to start a war is beyond me. Even when it was still just rumor, even on Horizon, I knew that either Cerberus had “indoctrinated” you in some sense, manipulated you with the Reaper threat, or that the rumors were flat-out wrong and either Cerberus wasn’t behind the colony attacks or you weren’t working for Cerberus. Or some combination of those. I believe that the Collectors are attacking colonies and that you’re working with Cerberus to stop it. I just… I don’t know that I can believe they haven’t done something to you until this is over. I’m sorry. It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s Cerberus._

_Kaidan_

I had no idea what the hell to say. Fortunately, I was distracted by a chime at the door.

“Tali? What’s going on?”

“The admirals were able to reconstruct a lot of the research we found on the Alarei. Admiral Xen is already talking about being six months away from being able to retake the homeworld. Shepard, I’ve dreamed of retaking our homeworld all my life.”

Obviously something had changed. “But?”

“But… what my father did… and with the Reapers and the Collectors hovering about to attack at any minute… I find myself wishing they’d listen to you. We’ve waited three hundred years to retake our world. Why can’t we wait a little longer, until after the Reaper threat is gone?”

Good question. “When we were introduced, I wasn’t expecting Admiral Koris to be the one I thought had some sense.”

“Me either. Admiral Gerrel and Raan have been friends of ours for a very long time. And Admiral Xen… she scares me, Shepard. I think she cares more about the geth than she does the quarians.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that sense. Have you heard anything about who they’re going to get to replace your father?”

“No. Nothing serious anyway. These kinds of decisions are important, they’re going to have to bicker a lot longer before they can agree to something. I have heard a few people suggest me, but I’m way too young for that. Not to mention if they’re going to call me vas Normandy then I’m on a ship that’s not part of the flotilla so I couldn’t always be available for sessions.”

“Are you okay with the name change, now that you’re not exiled?”

“It shouldn’t have been done like that. I was on a mission for you, not leaving the fleet. I think Koris did me a favor, though. And it’s hard to be upset about having you as my captain or the Normandy as my ship, as long as I’m welcome back when I’m ready to go.”

“Glad to hear that. The Normandy just doesn’t feel like it’s running right if you’re not in engineering, you know.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that having a quarian around was a good thing. Thank you, Shepard.”

“I don’t get it. I don’t know, maybe I just got the best quarian ever for my crew, but the quarians I’ve dealt with have been no better or worse than any other race. But every single one I’ve run into out here is getting hassled or bullied or threatened. And you never see a quarian in one of the merc gangs.”

“Quarians are willing to work cheap, and when the fleet passes through a system, we end up taking a lot of resources. So people resent us and call us scavengers and parasites. And I think with the suits, it makes it easier for people to see us as something less than they are. Something other. Even with the volus, you can see their faces.”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Shepard? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Tali. What’s on your mind?”

“Are you… you and Garrus…?”

“No. Why, are you interested in him?”

“What? No! No. Nothing like that. No!” Well, wasn’t this interesting. “I just thought… the two of you have been spending so much time together…”

“First Kaidan, now you, what a weird day today has been.”

“Kaidan? But… after Horizon…”

“Things are still awkward and up in the air. But we’re writing, and he’s defending me to his mother, so… I have hope.”

“That’s good. I always liked Kaidan. He overheard Pressly and Adams talking about me once, not long after we set out. And despite Pressly being a superior officer, Kaidan told him off for what he was saying about me. He didn’t even know I could hear the conversation until I thanked him for it later.”

“That sounds like Kaidan, all right. I’m betting he was really embarrassed when he realized you’d heard him?”

“A little, more because it meant I’d had to have heard what Pressly was saying than because I’d heard him. Anyway, thanks for listening to me. I should go get some sleep.”

As soon as we got through the mass relay, Joker picked up a distress signal. Batarian terrorists had armed two javelin missiles and aimed them at a colony. After fighting our way through the batarians, we only had enough time to stop one of the missiles. One was aimed at the residential center, the other the spaceport. I chose to save the innocent people. Spaceports and colonies can be rebuilt.

Storming the Blue Suns facility was actually kind of fun. The best part was when we found a message.

“Hey cousin! Selim just fired me for no reason. But I hear the Blue Suns are hiring people to take out some dumbass vigilante on Omega. Wish me luck!”

I tossed the message to Garrus. “Hey, dumbass vigilante. You think you shot him?”

“If he actually got hired, then probably. I shot a lot of people. Pretty sure this guy’s wrong about who the dumbass was, though.”

“Now, now, let’s not compete. There’s plenty of dumbass to go around.”

“And most of it’s splattered across a bridge in a hidey hole on Omega. There were these dumbasses who signed on, charged across the bridge, and then turned on their employers.”

“Hey, we turned on our employers _before_ we charged across the bridge. I figured if we helped you take out dumbasses, you wouldn’t shoot us before at least finding out why.”

“Heh. I recognized your armor right away, of course. Thought about pegging Miranda and Zaeed, for not being Kaidan and Tali or Liara, but thought I’d give you a chance to explain.”

“Almost wish you had gotten Zaeed, not fatal or anything, but a good clip across the hip or something. I still can’t believe you knew it was me and shot me anyway!”

“You’d have done the same and you know it.”

“Can we save the flirting for _after_ we finish the mission, please?” Miranda finally interjected.

We blew the beacon, killed the leader, and saved the day.


	33. Tuchanka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard takes Grunt to Tuchanka to get Grunt checked out. Mordin asks for help with tracking down an old protégé who he's heard is on Tuchanka. Shepard receives a very disturbing request.

_Kaidan,_

_So, today I destroyed a colony. No, don’t close the message, there were two missiles and one kill code. I could either save the colonists at the expense of making the colony unsustainable, or I could save the colony at the expense of the lives of thousands of colonists._

_Yes, Garrus and I have gotten close out here. He was there when I needed a shoulder to cry on – just ask him, I was sobbing. I was there to help him get revenge for his squad on Omega. I don’t know if you heard about Archangel. That was him. He didn’t die, he just came with me instead. I’ve gotten close to Tali, too. You know how I am about treating squadmates as my friends, not just my coworkers. Jacob, Mordin, Thane (the drell assassin), Samara (the asari justicar), even Miranda’s a friend now. But there’s a line I’ve only ever crossed once. And I plan to keep it that way until I’ve gotten my life back to the way it should be._

_So justicars are asari holy warriors or something like that. They give up everything they have to adhere to a strict code that determines their actions, and travel asari space righting wrongs and seeking out injustice. The code is so strict that Samara had to swear an oath to me so that if I asked her to do something against it, she wouldn’t have to kill me for it. I helped her hunt down an Ardat-Yakshi. You’d have hated her. In order to make sure she didn’t manage to slip away, Samara and I came up with a plan where I was dangled as bait. Ardat-Yakshi are asari with a genetic disorder that means when they mate with someone, their partner ends up dead. And this particular one… I just happened to be exactly the type she goes for. It’s been days, and I still don’t feel clean from letting her seduce me. (Nothing actually happened. Obviously, since I’m still alive. I managed to keep her spells from completely working on me, even.)_

_There’s something wrong with Grunt, our krogan, so we’re heading for Tuchanka to get him checked out. I’m hoping to see Wrex while we’re there. Where does going to a planet full of krogan fall on the scale of keeping you up at night?_

_Shepard_

Mordin caught me as we were just about to disembark for Tuchanka. It seemed a protégé of his had been kidnapped by krogans, presumably to do something about the genophage. I figured we could look into that while the doctors did their thing with Grunt.

I figured our best chance was with Clan Urdnot. As it turned out, I was right. Wrex had taken over the clan. It was great to see him. He’d put a plan in place that was slowly uniting the clans into one krogan people. His scout chief was able to point us to Maelon, Mordin’s friend, who was being held by Clan Weyrloc.

We stormed the base – a krogan hospital. We found a human corpse – apparently, they were using humans in tests. Mordin swore he never tested anything on a species with members capable of calculus. I wasn’t entirely sure that ruled out krogan, but it was good to hear. We met up with the most pretentious krogan I have ever met. He told us to flee, but we wouldn’t. He then started up into what seemed to be a long speech. I say seemed to be because I cut him off early. With a bullet. And some fire.

As we got closer, Mordin and I talked about the genophage. He acknowledged that there were ethical concerns, but he still insisted it was the only choice the salarians had. The galaxy had. I was skeptical and said so. We found the Urdnot scout and I managed to shame him into leaving like the badass he should be.

When we found Maelon, we were in for a surprise. He hadn’t been kidnapped. He’d come of his own free will, because he wanted to cure the genophage. Mordin wanted to kill him, but I talked him out of it. Mordin’s no murderer. Killer, sure. But not a murderer. Mordin saved the data, too. Despite how it was obtained, there was a good chance it could help in curing the genophage later.

When we got back, Wrex told us that Grunt just needed to go through a krogan coming-of-age ritual. If he did, he’d become Urdnot Grunt, although there was some opposition because he was grown in a tank. The trial was brutal – first shooting varren, then klixen. The last round was supposed to be surviving a thresher maw attack. Well, it was me, Grunt, and Garrus. Between the three of us, there’s a lot of stubborn, even more recklessness, and not much use for hiding and waiting things out. We took that bastard down. The krogan were duly impressed. I’m a little disturbed about that breeding request, though.

I made a friend on Tuchanka. A varren. Urz. Grunt promised Urz could live in the cargo hold with him, so we brought him with us. I don’t know why I collect pets. Some people would argue that half my squad are pets I’ve collected. I’m just a big softy, I guess. I hope Urz is okay.

I got back to the Normandy to find a message waiting for me.

_Shepard,_

_Going to the krogan homeworld… depends. Wrex there or not? If Wrex is there, I’ll sleep like a metaphorical baby. He’ll take care of you. If not… more like an actual baby. You’ve probably never been around babies much, growing up in space like you did. I have two younger sisters and the older one has two kids of her own. And don’t think my mother has ever let me forget that. Babies wake up every couple hours and start crying. Or screaming. Or both._

_Speaking of crying… I’m sorry. I know I said that before, but I shouldn’t have said what I said the way I said it._

_I heard about the colony you destroyed. Hadn’t heard for sure who it was who saved the capital, but I had a hunch it was you. You made the right choice, Shepard. They’ll rebuild the colony eventually. Those people’s lives couldn’t be given back. I know you hate the tough calls, but I really do sleep better at night knowing you’re around to make them. The galaxy’s in good hands with you as its savior._

_That sounded less ridiculous in my head._

_Do you have any idea why Anderson would be asking me about you? What do you want me to tell him?_

_Kaidan_

Huh. Good question, that one. I didn’t. I had crew to talk to, though. Miranda actually apologized to me for doubting me. We had a somewhat productive conversation about Cerberus. Mordin had dealt with his feelings about Maelon and the data was in a corner waiting for us to be finished with the Collectors. Grunt was still filled with battle lust, but he’d accepted it and come to like it. It’s not like we were going to run out of enemies soon, so I didn’t worry too much about it. Samara was having a bit of a crisis. She was fully committed to our mission, but for the first time, she didn’t know what her next move was if she survived the trip with me.

I wasn’t quite sure what our next move was, so when Hackett called about a ship that was about to crash into one of our colonies, I jumped at the chance to do Alliance work again. The ship had been overrun by geth. We tracked the geth back to a planet in the next system over and eliminated them.


	34. Citadel Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard helps Thane save his son's soul.

_Kaidan,_

_Wrex was there. And yet, I still ended up fighting a thresher maw. On foot. With only Garrus and Grunt to help._

_Seriously. It was part of a krogan ritual, a coming-of-age thing for Grunt to earn his place in Wrex’s clan. Technically, all we had to do was survive a set amount of time in the ring with the thing. There was cover, we could hide. But come on, you know us better than that. Oh, yeah, and I headbutted a krogan. Figured Wrex wouldn’t mind. The guy was an idiot and was causing problems. Surviving the thresher maw is supposed to represent the krogan’s struggle to survive against the genophage. Wrex was the last one to actually kill the thing. Can’t help but wonder if this is a sign that Wrex and I will somehow kill the genophage too._

_I mean, why not? What’s one more thing to be called the savior of? No matter how cheesy it sounds. (Ugh. You know I hate that crap. Knock it off. I’m just a soldier doing what needs to be done. If I ever start buying my own press, put me on with Khalisah bint Sinan al-Jilani. She’ll cut me down to size.) (But thanks for the reassurance. Coming from you, that means so much more than I can say.)_

_I haven’t got the slightest idea about Anderson. I haven’t talked to him since he shut down my attempt to find you. Not because I’m mad at him or anything, just I don’t want to make his life any more difficult than it already is. Nearly got him fired when I showed up last time. Tell him whatever you want. The Alliance can’t actually do anything to me that they haven’t already done, and Anderson’s a good guy. Pretty sure he’d be out here kicking ass and taking names with me if he could._

_So, you know a lot about babies, huh? Does your mom’s pressure bug you, or is that something you want? (The kids, not your mom nagging you. If you want your mom nagging you you are a very different man than I thought.) I always swore I wasn’t having kids, because I didn’t want them living the life I did, but things started looking different a couple months ago. Who knows how things will look once we’re done with the Reapers and my life is my own again._

_About the “couple months”: because of all the cybernetics Cerberus put in me to bring me back. I’ve had Chakwas take a look, and she thinks we can replace some of them easily enough. She can’t say for sure whether I even could have children. Everything should be functional, but there’s enough cybernetics in there that she wants me to consult a specialist before I start trying to get pregnant. Funny how you can sometimes not know how much you’d started to want something until you’re told you can’t have it._

_Oh, god, I just thought of something. Because of the attack on the station, Miranda had to wake me up before I fully healed. I spent weeks running around looking like… I don’t even know. I had these cracks in my face, and you could see the orange glow of the cybernetics through them. Chakwas came up with a corrective treatment that I barely needed by then but took anyway. I am so glad they were healed before I ran into you on Horizon. Not vanity. Just you were already questioning, and if you’d seen how much machinery is keeping me alive…_

_And now that I’ve told you more than you ever wanted to know, I have to go. EDI just told me Thane’s looking for me. My guess: either something’s come up with his illness, or he’s gotten word of his son._

_Shepard_

It occurred to me after I’d hit send that I’d never told Kaidan anything about EDI. Oh well. As it turned out, I was right: Thane had learned that his son had been hired as a hit man and wanted to go stop it. He’d very carefully kept his son away from all his work as an assassin because he didn’t want him going down that path.

Our first lead took us to a kid named Mouse. Mouse and Thane knew each other from way back, and Mouse had helped Kolyat get a job with Elias Kelham. Who, of course, had a deal with Captain Bailey. Still, Bailey was willing to help us out. We didn’t have time to do it right, but if I handled the beating myself, I knew I could get out of there without permanent damage done. I was right.

The target was an anti-human politician. I didn’t much care if he lived or died, but I cared whether Kolyat killed him. It was close – Kolyat had the gun drawn and the politician on his knees when we burst in. But the kid wasn’t a trained killer. After I shot out the lamp beside him, I was able to get the politician out of there unharmed. Thane and Kolyat had a long conversation, one I hope was productive, and Bailey agreed to keep the matter strictly internal.

On the way out, we ran across a couple of asari who were stuck on the Citadel. Some idiot somewhere had them flagged as potential geth infiltrators. What the hell does that even mean? They obviously weren’t geth. Do geth even infiltrate? How would that even work? I managed to convince the customs official of that.

Back on the ship, Thane and I had a good talk about the relationship between the drell and hanar. I hadn’t really thought about how much the hanar couldn’t do that most races could. The symbiosis between the two races was a beautiful thing to hear about. Although I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the notion that they trained six-year-olds to be killers.

Mordin wanted to share his research into the Prothean-Collector connection. It was really a thing of beauty – in the early stages, the Protheans were indoctrinated. As they started to fail, the Reapers compensated with tech. Eventually, the Collectors were nothing more than husks. This was the fate of humans and every other race in the galaxy if I didn’t stop the Reapers.

I also learned that Mordin likes art. And sings. Gilbert and Sullivan of all things.


	35. Lair of the Shadow Broker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard helps Liara track down the Shadow Broker. The Shadow Broker, despite all his research, Fucks Up.

There wasn’t a response yet from Kaidan, but there was an anonymous message telling me to go to Illium, with intel that Liara needed as soon as possible. At Eternity, we ran into a quarian slave who was trying to get Synthetic Insights to buy her. I talked to the rep, and suggested a strategy where she got a quarian AI tech who knew her stuff without having a slave. Tali loved that.

Liara was able to combine the data I had with her own work to get a location on the Shadow Broker. We were supposed to meet at her apartment to go over the plan, but there was an attack. Tela Vasir, a Spectre, was there investigating, and I cooperated. Mostly because Udina and the Council wouldn’t give me back my own status. Asshats.

We tracked Liara to a meeting at Drakon Trade Center, and got there just in time to watch a bomb destroy three floors of the building. But Liara was one of mine. She survived. Her contact didn’t, and I knew Liara would feel guilty about that, but for now I had to focus on the fact that the Spectre was working for the Shadow Broker. And she’d even mocked herself for using overkill because of no time to plan. This was my fault. Of all people, I should know better than to trust Spectres just because they’re Spectres.

We chased her through the skylanes, through buildings. It was fun. Liara sounded so surprised when she realized I was enjoying it. How long had she ridden in the Mako with me? Vasir tried taking a hostage. It didn’t work out too well for her. Liara and I handled things the usual way. You know, I say something that makes me sound badass and Liara biotically smacks a table into the back of her head, freeing the hostage without hurting her. The fight was entertaining. I’d never actually fought another person who loved biotic charging as much as I do.

We were able to get the data and find the Shadow Broker, but I was worried about Liara. She’d gotten so cold. I got that she was worried about her friend, but still, I couldn’t believe that she’d just take off without even checking to make sure a little fall _hadn’t_ killed me or Garrus.

The Shadow Broker’s ship was on a planet where it was constantly chasing storms. Running around the outside of that thing was creepy. Liara, I love her, really, but she was giving the mercenaries tactical advice. Nearly strangled her for that. We found our way inside, where there were still more guards. LIARA.

We found Feron strapped into a chair that was trapped to hurt him if we tried to free him. Because of course he was. It wasn’t much farther to find the Shadow Broker himself. He called me reckless. I guess he really did know everything. Except he made the mistake. He fucked with my crew. He threw half his desk at Garrus. I don’t care how big the guy was, how scary with the horns and the teeth… he fucked with Garrus. He had to die. And he did.

Of course, that meant I had to punch him a few times. And he was about six times my size. Did I mention the horns and teeth?

With the old Shadow Broker dead, Liara stepped into the role. I don’t know how much she’d thought it through, but it fit. Of course, it meant she still couldn’t come with me, now that she had to put together what the hell she was doing. But unlike the previous Shadow Broker, she had an allegiance: me.

Liara was a bit overwhelmed, but she needed to get a handle on things. I managed to get her to the Normandy to show her around a bit, but after that, I left her to it and moved on.

_Shepard,_

_I swear, you’re going to be the death of me. Garrus gave me a play-by-play of that thresher maw fight. If I didn’t know the two of you, I’m not sure I’d believe it. And I know you don’t like to think of yourself as a hero, but you have to admit that the things you’ve done… you kind of do come off as one. If anyone’s going to cure the genophage in our lifetime, I sure wouldn’t bet against you and Wrex._

_I never really put any serious thought into whether I wanted kids. At first I was too young, and then… well, after what happened with Vyrrnus and Rahna, I never thought I’d be able to let my guard down enough to let a woman close enough to be worth asking the question. Not until you. Then you died, and if it took me fifteen years to try again after a simple rejection, I was just going to be too damn old if I ever got to a place like that after you. Mom doesn’t really bother me too often about it, although she doesn’t understand why. Aura’s kids kind of take the worst of the pressure off. The girl was born a couple months after you died, and I had to threaten to disown my sister if she named her Shepard. I couldn’t talk her out of Julie, though._

_Turns out Anderson was asking because he suspected we’d kept in contact after Horizon. Since he can’t talk to you directly, or anyone on your ship, Admiral Hackett and I are the only sources he has. I get the feeling he thinks of you as his daughter, and he asked me to tell you that he’d be very grateful if you’d “wrap this up and get your ass back to the Alliance where it belongs.” Your mom asked me to tell you to write to her, too. Please do, I don’t need two worried mothers constantly prodding me for information._

_What’s an EDI?_

_Kaidan_

Somehow the thought of a bunch of kids running around being named Shepard turned my stomach. At least Kaidan seemed to be on my side there.

_Kaidan,_

_EDI’s our VI. Ask Joker about her, he’s her biggest fan. (If you value your life, you might want to note that there should be a sarcastic tone to that.)_

_I don’t know if you knew this, but Anderson was my mentor when I did my N7 training. I’m not surprised to hear he thinks of me that way. It’s not like my parents aren’t still living, but if I need a parent, I’m just as likely to think of Anderson as either of them. But don’t you dare tell my mother that._

_You might want to send a message to Liara. She’s a bit overwhelmed and could use another friend to talk to, I think._

_Thank you so much for talking sense into your sister. I don’t care if she actually did minimal research and named Julie after me or if there’s a completely unrelated reason, but naming kids Shepard is child abuse._

_I’m adding to the list of Things That Will Give You Nightmares. Look up yahgs. Then imagine one throwing a desk into Garrus and knocking him out in front of me. Then add some kind of shield that blocked energy and projectiles so hand-to-hand is the only option._

_Hey, did I ever tell you I have pets now? I have a hamster and a varren and a bunch of fish. I picked up the varren on Tuchanka. Wrex nearly laughed his head off when he realized I’d found another trained killer who was somewhat broken to take in. His name’s Urz and he used to be a champion pit fighter. The fish… when Cerberus rebuilt the Normandy, their engineers didn’t get the memo that it was a warship. The captain’s cabin has this huge fishtank, and I couldn’t have a fishtank and not put fish in, could I? I don’t know why I picked up Fuzzbucket the Hamster._

_Remember Nihlus? He got into a fight with Samara the Justicar. He managed to escape that one. It took him two weeks to finally shake her, though._

_I’ve got a couple errands to take care of, but… I can actually look at the mission report on the derelict Reaper without envisioning inserting a cigarette into an asshole lit end first, so we’re probably gonna get to that fairly soon. This isn’t your notification message. You’ll get that when I set course for the Reaper. Just a head’s up that it could be within the next few days._

_Shepard_


	36. Shepard Loses Her Mind And Goes On An Allegedly Derelict Reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I... think I said it all in the chapter title.

Hackett kicked a report of a mining facility that had gone anomalous to me, so we went to check that out. They’d found an alien device that turned them all into husks. Hooray for us. Sorry Liara, but we had to destroy that damn thing. Then the solar shield in the Sinmara colony was failing and we needed to go fix it please. An YMIR mech broadcasting a signal to check out turned out to be a mine that had just been left empty with easily-recoverable resources just right there. Tali passed along a quarian emergency on Gei Hinnom that we went to check out.

_Shepard,_

_Was there enough left of the yahg to bury? Wish I’d been there, that thing hurt Garrus and now I want to put a couple rounds in it and then hit it with a reave. Oddly enough, Garrus didn’t tell me this story._

_Small galaxy, huh? What did Nihlus do to piss off a justicar?_

_Somehow, I can’t be the least bit surprised you picked up a varren. Or a hamster. The fish, yes. But that’s more Cerberus’s fault for giving you a fish tank. What the hell? I assume you’ve gotten Urz back to champion caliber, even if you’re not actually throwing him into pit fights. You’re just that kind of person. Take a broken fighter and put the pieces back together better than new._

_I’m sorry this is so short. Hackett’s had me on this really obnoxious mission. I’m safe enough, but it’s tedious. Lots of time spent on watch duty, very little time where I can actually write._

_Kaidan_

For once, I actually had a response to send right away.

_Kaidan,_

_We’re making our approach to the Reaper. I wish I could come up with some kind of code phrase or something to let you know I made it out unindoctrinated, but it doesn’t work that way. I know there are things we’re Not Talking About until we can actually talk about them, but I want you to know: you may not be here with me, but you’re never far from my mind. You keep me going._

_Shepard_

There was a geth ship outside the Reaper. Joker dropped us off, and we went looking for the science team and the IFF. The Reaper wasn’t as derelict as we’d been led to believe – its mass effect field was still active, and it could put up kinetic barriers. There were husks all over the place, which was irritating, but I was more intrigued by a mystery sniper.

We found the dragon’s teeth, confirming them as Reaper tech. We found the sniper, too. A geth. Who addressed me by name. “Shepard-Commander.” Then we got so many husks thrown at us I didn’t know whether we’d get out. Covered by scions. It was rough, but we got through. And then we found the IFF, so whatever happened, at least the trip wasn’t a total loss.

The geth was doing something to the Reaper core, but husks overwhelmed it before it could finish. It did leave the core exposed, so Garrus and Miranda kept the husks off me while I shot out the core. Miranda wanted to take the geth with us for study; Garrus thought we should leave it. Tali told me once that no one had ever captured an intact geth, so I sided with Miranda.

Of course, then we had to decide what to do with it. Miranda wanted to send it to Cerberus. Jacob wanted to throw it out the airlock. I wanted to talk to it. My ship, my decision: I reactivated it. It was an interesting conversation, where the geth explained to me that I’d never actually met the geth: I met heretics. A breakaway faction of the consensus that worshiped the Old Machines, the Reapers, as gods. The true geth monitored organics and were interested in me in particular, but had not followed Saren and had no ill will towards organics. EDI suggested calling the geth platform in front of me Legion, and it agreed to that. It wanted to join our mission.

It also had a request. The heretics had written a virus that would reprogram the geth to think like the heretics. It wanted to destroy the virus, and as many heretics with it as we could. Well, hey, I’m all for taking out Reaper servants. I got a destination and sat down to messages.

Tim trusted me to do my job and even though he wouldn’t have brought the geth on board he had faith I knew what I was doing. That was a good one.

Kaidan hadn’t answered. Don’t know if that’s because of what I said or because he was just waiting to hear I was alive, so I went ahead and wrote to him again.

_Kaidan,_

_I’m out. We’ve got the IFF. EDI’s got it installed and is putting it through testing. As near as I can tell, I’m fine. I’ve made Tali promise to keep an eye on me and Garrus and tell you and Liara the second we start showing signs of indoctrination. Tali never went on the Reaper, so she should be safe._

_I have another new crew member. You’ll love this one. We’re calling it Legion. Yes, “it”. See, it’s a geth platform. According to it, we’ve never actually met geth; we’ve met heretics who got kicked out of the geth for worshiping Reapers. We’re on our way to destroy a virus they wrote to reprogram the real geth, so it’s possible. Don’t worry, I don’t trust it, it’s isolated from any of our machines. Tali’s pissed at me for this one, which isn’t surprising. Oh, and it has a piece of N7 armor patching a hole on its hardware._

_Get some sleep tonight._

_Shepard_


	37. Heretic Base

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes with Legion to check out the heretic base and makes a difficult choice. When she gets back, she discovers that the Collectors have made the biggest possible mistake they could have.
> 
> The team assembles to prepare for the suicide trip.

We got to the heretic station to find the virus was complete. Legion suggested that we could use the virus to rewrite the heretics rather than destroying the station. I didn’t like the sound of that, but decided to leave the decision to Legion. Its people, its call. Legion tried to explain once again that the geth are programs, not their platforms. There’s no reason to worry about sharing data because they are not individuals. We also learned that geth don’t bother with windows, air, or most of the things organics would expect. They do have gravity, surprisingly enough.

Legion was shaken by the discovery that the heretics were spying on the geth. They’d been separated for years, and the two groups had taken different paths. It wasn’t sure what to do about that. It also hadn’t reached any kind of consensus about the virus. It couldn’t. Even when we had control and were ready to do what we were going to, the runtimes were pretty evenly split. I chose to destroy the heretics. I was worried that they would remain susceptible when the Reapers came back.

And then I came back to the Normandy. To find Tali holding a gun on Legion. Legion was trying to warn his people that the quarians were talking about going to war. All it wanted was to protect its people. But it put the Migrant Fleet in danger, and Tali would never forgive me for allowing that. Once I knocked some sense into them both, they actually started talking to each other.

_Shepard,_

_Thank god. I must have tried a hundred times to find something to write so that you’d have something in your message box to come back to, but everything just sounded wrong. Or inadequate. I’ll figure something out when you go through the Omega-4 relay. I promise._

_You know, I’ve mostly let Ash go. She died, she died well, I’ve convinced myself you made a good choice that day for the right reasons and let go of the guilt, and most days, if I think of her, it’s with a smile and a hope that she made it to that Heaven she believed so hard in with her dad. You would pick a time when I didn’t have work to distract myself with to go to the Reaper. I swear, I could feel Ash in the room with me, telling me you’d come back and that when you did I should stop being an idiot._

_I guess this means you’re probably headed for the relay soon. You’ve got what you need and the sooner you go, the sooner no more colonies get hit. Take care of your team, and don’t forget to take care of yourself, too. I owe you lunch on the Citadel, and you know how I hate leaving debts unsettled._

_Kaidan_

Just like Kaidan, I thought. A brilliant mixture of honesty and guardedness. EDI called then and told me the IFF was installed, but she wanted to shake out some bugs. Miranda gathered the team in the shuttle so that we could go see what of the Reaper was left while EDI ran her tests. We got a call two hours later. The Normandy had been attacked, Joker had unshackled EDI, and the rest of the crew was gone.

Joker had saved my ship. He’d also unshackled an AI. I didn’t know whether to kill him or kiss him or neither. He did what he had to do, though, and I respected that. He was a bloody hero as far as I was concerned. Miranda was pissed, but what else was there he could have done?

Now, I may have mentioned this a time or two. But when something fucks with my people, I tend to go a little crazy. My ship was good. My team was strong and focused. My crew was taken. It was time. I told Joker to set course for the relay.

_Kaidan,_

_They took my crew. I was out with my team trying to get something more from that Reaper, and the Collector ship came and took my crew. If it weren’t for Joker and EDI, they’d have taken my ship. We’re going through the relay as soon as we can get to it._

_I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, or what kind of ship and crew and team I’ll be bringing back. So no promises here, other than to say that when I’m back, the first thing I’m doing is getting you a message. Screw communication blackouts and Alliance Command. You’re not hearing rumors of my return from death for weeks before you’re suddenly confronted with me again._

_Once again, I know we’re Not Talking About It. But I wish you were here. Going through the Mu Relay, I was totally distracted from everything. No time to dwell on the what-ifs and the fear and the realism that’s starting to set in. I don’t have that this time. I just… I miss you so much right now. And I can’t leave that unsaid, not knowing there’s a better chance than I’m willing to admit that I might not make it to that lunch you owe me._

_Juliet_

My hand shook over the send button. I’d promised Kaidan a message, and I hadn’t lied, I couldn’t leave things unsaid. I steeled myself and hit send, then went to the battery.

“Shepard? What are you doing here?” Garrus asked, looking up from the gun he was calibrating. Again.

“I can’t be alone right now. It’s too quiet up in my cabin. It wasn’t this hard last time, waiting.”

“Last time we weren’t walking into a suicide mission knowing that we can’t trust our backers. Last time we were riding the adrenaline of stealing the ship. Oh, yeah, and last time, you had Kaidan to distract you from everything.” He gave the gun a couple final tweaks and stood up. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Come on. You need a distraction.”

“Uh, Garrus…”

Garrus held up his hands. “Not that way, not unless you smuggled Kaidan aboard when I wasn’t looking and haven’t gotten around to telling me about it. The way where we get Tali and Jacob and Kasumi and maybe Thane and we establish a thinking-free area of the ship where we can have a final meal and shoot the shit and just not let anyone lose themselves to melancholy.”

“What about everyone else?” There were so few of us left on board, the thought of leaving anyone out seemed wrong. Even Zaeed, or Legion.

“Them too if they wanna come and will obey the rules. No hurting each other, no talking about the future, no letting anyone hide and mope. And absolutely no saying goodbye.”

Turns out, everyone on the ship came, including Legion and Samara. Joker complained, so we moved the party up to the CIC so we could come by and help him out too. Even EDI joined in on the distraction. The party broke up when we hit the relay, though – my team to go get armed up, and Joker to make sure the ship was ready to go when we hit decel.


	38. The Collector Base

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard investigates the Collector base and survives the suicide mission. Upon return, she tells the Illusive Man to fuck off. When she talks to Hackett, though, he's got one thing he wants her to do before she comes home to the Alliance.

Glad Joker was paying attention. The debris field was cluttered with the remnants of all the ships that tried to make it through and failed. Thankfully, the upgraded Normandy held up to Joker’s expert flying, and EDI was able to take care of the things that came after us, for the most part. One did breach the hull, and Garrus, Miranda, and I went to take it out.

The Normandy held up through a lot, even destroying the Collector ship that had been dogging my steps all this time, but she crash-landed on the base. I sent Tali in through a ventilation shaft to open the doors, then divided the squad in half to keep the Collectors off-balance. As much as I wanted him at my back, Garrus was the only one I trusted to lead the other team. I took Miranda, Legion, Grunt, Samara, and Kasumi; Garrus took Thane, Jacob, Jack, Mordin, and Zaeed. Both teams made it through, and though it was a tight squeeze for Tali and she was dealing with heat, we pulled her out of the fire too.

Once we had a chance to take stock, we realized we were looking at the colonists and crew – and some of them were still alive. My whole crew was safe. Some of the colonists, although we weren’t in time to save more. We watched in horror as one was liquefied right in front of us. Chakwas was able to tell us that she’d watched more, and that the goo was passed through tubes to… something. And all they could do was wait.

The way forward lay through seeker swarms. Samara offered to hold them off with a biotic field while a small team got through, and the rest of the people went off another way. We could open the door for them when we got through. I agreed to go with Samara, along with Grunt and Jacob. Garrus would lead the others. The crew needed to get back to the Normandy. Joker could pick them up, but I wasn’t comfortable sending them alone. Mordin volunteered to go with them, since they would probably need medical attention as soon as possible when they got back, and Chakwas shouldn’t have to handle the job alone. Made sense to me.

Samara was able to do it – barely. We got to the doors just as she was about to give out. Garrus’s team was under heavy fire, and Garrus took a nasty bullet as we slammed the doors closed, but he was okay. Then it was just for us to move forward. I took Tali and Thane with me to overload the base, leaving everyone else to hold the line at the door.

Once we’d blasted our way through the Collectors, we were confronted with a human Reaper. It was being made, literally, of the goo left when the humans were liquefied. A horrific fate. We had to take this abomination down. Tens of thousands of humans, and it was still extremely unfinished, almost embryonic. It would take millions, perhaps billions, of humans to finish it. We were able to shoot out the injection tubes.

Tim contacted me as I was getting ready to blow the base. The idiot actually thought that after everything, I would trust him with the Collector base. If there were a way I could hand it to the Council and be sure it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, I might have considered it. But we only took the Reaper down, and those things are hard to destroy. Blowing the base? Meant the Reaper stayed dead. Tim just might finish the job of building it.

I blew the base. Pulled one of my daring, last-second escapes. Joker pointed us toward the relay, and I called Tim the second we hit the Terminus systems. He was… unhappy. I didn’t care the least little bit.

“The technology from that base could have secured human dominance in the galaxy! Against the Reapers and beyond,” Tim informed me.

I didn't bother to try to be respectful. Didn't see the point anymore. “I don’t give a shit about human dominance. Humans are one of many in this galaxy. _All_ I care about is stopping the Reapers. I’ve been working with you to stop the Collectors. They’re stopped. But Harbinger is still coming, and I don’t know how many friends he’s bringing with him. So fall in line or step aside, but don’t get in my way.”

“You’re sure that’s what you want?” Tim asked.

“I’ve never lost sight of who I am or what I want. And if you’re no longer going to back me, then I’m taking the Normandy and getting back to people who I can at least respect while they screw me over. Joker, end transmission. Lose this channel." This was fun.

“Yes, ma’am.” Joker sounded even more pleased than he had when I had him cut off the Council. I started to leave, but Joker stopped me. “Uh, there’s a call from Hackett. You wanna take it?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Shepard. Hackett here. This is kind of an emergency, so I’m asking you as a personal favor. A friend of mine, Amanda Kensen, is locked in a batarian prison on charges of terrorism. I need you to go get her out.”

“Sir?”

“She’s on a deep-cover mission in the Bahaz system, on Aratoht." A batarian colony? Interesting... "I haven’t spoken to her in a long time, but her work was important. I can’t send an official Alliance rescue, but you’re not Alliance. Not now.”

“About that, sir…” I started. The idea of going any longer without an Alliance uniform was somewhat upsetting.

“Not yet," Hackett said, and I decided not to argue. "Get Kenson first, find out what’s going on. One more thing – I need you to do this one alone. One person getting in and out is someone rescuing a friend. A team of commandos is a declaration of war.”

I didn't like it, but it was a reasonable enough request. “I can do that, sir.”

“Good. Hackett out.”

Joker had been listening. “Course set for Aratoht, ma’am. Ready when you give the word.”

“Do it.”

_Shepard,_

_Get back here alive. I still don’t know what to say, what you’ll want or need to hear when you get back. So get back here so I can tell you everything in person at Apollo’s._

_Kaidan_

_Kaidan,_

_I’m alive. I’ve told the Illusive Man to fuck off. Hackett’s got something he needs me to do before I come back to the Alliance, or turn myself in, or whatever’s going to happen. We’re on our way there now. It shouldn’t take more than a couple days, then we’ll stop at the Citadel so any of my crew who wants to get out before I turn myself and the Normandy over can. They’ve all been through so much. I’m coming home even if I have to fly the Normandy myself, but I’m not going to force anyone else to come with me._

_See you soon._

_Shepard_


	39. Aratoht System

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard makes a choice to save the galaxy at the expense of a bunch of batarians. Then she prepares to face the consequences of her decisions since her restoration to life.

My intentions were good. I got Kenson out. That was supposed to be the end of it. But what she’d discovered was that the Reapers were coming, here, now. Just over two days. She said they had proof – a Reaper device. They called it Object Rho. I agreed to take a look, because the plan was to slam an asteroid into the mass relay, which would cause it to go supernova and take out the system. I wanted proof.

Remind me never to fall for the “we’ve been careful, so we know we’re not indoctrinated” line ever again. Amanda Kenson was indoctrinated and was setting me up. I was woozy after the vision, like I always am. When I woke up, I had less than two hours. I was also wearing a fucking Cerberus uniform. The entire time I’d worked with them, I wore my own clothes rather than any kind of uniform. This pissed me off worse than the fact that they’d held me captive in a med bay.

I fought my way through to Project Control. I activated the Project. 304,942 casualties or thereabouts. I was going to kill more batarians than the Collectors had humans. The only justification was that 300,000 batarians was something the Reapers would consider an appetizer and there was no time to find another way. I tried to warn Aratoht, but Kenson had cut communications and was threatening an eezo core meltdown to destroy the asteroid before it could hit the mass relay. I stopped her and got off the asteroid in time, but only barely.

I watched the system explode on the galaxy map. I then headed to the sick bay to get checked out, and I'm fairly sure Chakwas slipped me a sedative because I didn't make it out before falling asleep. When I woke up, Hackett was there to personally debrief me. He accepted that what I had done was necessary, but told me the batarians wouldn’t see it that way. “There’s just enough evidence – shoddy though it is – that they could turn this into a witch hunt, Shepard.”

I nodded. I didn't like it, but I knew what had to happen to give the galaxy half a chance at survival. “I was already planning to surrender myself and the Normandy to demonstrate a clear break with Cerberus, Admiral. If I go down for this, well, I go down. Promise me you’ll keep them focused on the Reapers after my trial and I’ll surrender myself and the Normandy into your custody as soon as we reach the Citadel.”

“Why the Citadel? Why not now?” Hackett asked.

“Because I made a promise to my crew." Hackett raised an eyebrow at that. "Most of my team either were never Alliance or never signed on with Cerberus, they were here as a personal favor to me. They don’t deserve terrorism charges, not for their service aboard my ship, and I’m not going to force them to accept being treated as criminals. As for the crew, I think what happened to them on the Collector ship is more than enough for them to go through because of their decision to join Cerberus. These are good people, Admiral, and I will fight to keep them from going down for my actions and my decisions.”

“Understood. Get your crew to the Citadel, and whoever’s left to Arcturus to surrender yourself,” Hackett said.

“Thank you, Admiral. For what it's worth, I’m sorry about Dr. Kenson. She was indoctrinated before I got there.”

Hackett let out a rueful chuckle. “From the sound of things, she had an unshielded Reaper artifact in the middle of her facility. She knew better than that. Not your fault.” He turned to go back to his ship and I went to check my email.

_Shepard,_

_What happened? Please tell me you made it out of the system before it exploded._

_Kaidan_

Well, shit. This was going to be tricky. What did I say? I couldn’t expose Kaidan to blowback from this. He hadn't done a damn thing wrong. But I couldn’t let him hear about it from my trial, either, because who knew what I'd have to let them say about me.

_Kaidan,_

_I’m alive. I made it out with minutes to spare. But I’m about to go down as a war criminal. I had no choice, but I killed three hundred thousand batarians and destroyed a mass relay. You’ll hear the details from my trial, I’m sure. There’s enough evidence that I have to let them take me down or there will be war with the batarians, and we don’t have time for that. The Reapers are coming, and they’ll be here in a matter of months. Do what you can to encourage the Alliance to prepare._

_For your own sake, don’t try to contact me again. As far as anyone but you and I and our closest friends know, we haven’t spoken since our fight on Horizon, so you’re above the brush of suspicion that my current associates will face. I acted alone, but my Cerberus-tainted friends may have trouble convincing people of that. I can’t have you dragged into the muck when you didn’t do anything wrong._

_I’m so sorry. Kaidan, I’m sorry. I had to, and I have to do what I’m doing now, and it’s killing me. We can’t salvage things now. It’s over._

_Shepard_

I managed to hold the tears back until I’d hit send. I didn’t move from my bed until we’d reached the Citadel, when I went to the PA. “Attention all crew. We’ll be leaving in four hours. At that time, the Normandy will be heading to Arcturus Station, where it will be handed over to Admiral Hackett of the Alliance. I will be standing trial for my actions aboard this ship. I will do my best to shield every member of my team and my crew, whether ex-Alliance, never Alliance, or non-human, but I can’t promise anything about what will happen to you. If you don’t want to take that risk, I don't blame you. Clean out your lockers and stay here on the Citadel. Thank you very much for your service during our long nightmare, and I wish you all the best of luck in whatever you choose to do next.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus ends ME2! Kind of a depressing note to end on, but... blame BioWare for that, not me.
> 
> Coming soon: ME3, after a brief interlude (chapter, not me taking time off from posting).


	40. House Arrest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard faces the music. The song sucks.

Four hours later, I went down to the bridge. Joker was in the cockpit, which wasn't really much of a surprise. “Time to go, Commander?”

“Time to go. Who else is left?”

“Most of the crew took off; Chakwas, Daniels, and Donnelly are still with us. Kasumi left, of course; even without Cerberus she's probably one of the most wanted humans alive. Zaeed said something about tracking down Vigo Santiago again now that you couldn't stop him from getting the job done." I shook my head. So far, no surprises. "Miranda's gone, and good riddance. Said she'll contact you if things work out but not to expect too much since she's going on the run from Cerberus." That was a surprise. I know she'd come around on blowing up the Collector base, but to hear that Miranda was leaving Cerberus... I was shocked. And proud of her. She was too damn smart to be Tim's puppet. "Jacob left a message that he wanted to stay, but he’d been contacted by an old friend who wanted to talk to him as soon as possible and he needed to go check that out. Thane figured now that the mission’s over, Kolyat needs him more than you do." Good for Thane. Also, the Citadel was more likely to be able to handle his illness. "Samara thought about staying, but I gave Liara a head's up and she called to talk to her and remind her that humans don't recognize justicars the way the asari do. Wrex called when I contacted him and told Grunt that if he wanted to be Clan Urdnot, he needed to get his ass to Tuchanka and help his clan out instead of chasing after aliens. Mordin's off to Sur'Kesh to start seeing what he can do with Maelon's data, now that the Collectors are no longer a threat. Garrus and Tali stayed aboard, of course, the Alliance can’t touch them without causing huge diplomatic incidents and they want to make sure you’re okay." That wasn't a surprise, but it was incredibly welcome. Garrus always has my back, and it was really good to know he'd be there this time too. "And Jack just doesn’t care what the Alliance does so she's coming with us. Tali’s trying to convince Legion to get the hell out of here and back to the geth so the Alliance won’t declare it a prisoner of war.”

Legion wanting to stay was a surprise in and of itself, but Tali trying to protect it... wow. “Huh. Good for Tali. Why are you still here?”

“Because the Alliance can go screw itself, but someone has to be here to look after EDI if you’re handing over the Normandy. She can't just ditch out here at the Citadel like anyone else, and I'm not leaving her.” Yep. About what I figured.

The trial went about as well as could be expected. There wasn’t enough evidence for them to really bring the hammer down, but there was enough that they had to do something about me, especially in light of the Cerberus connection. I found out they were still trying to blame me for Horizon, and I will freely admit that I didn't exactly help my case with my extremely sarcastic defense.

They couldn't really punish me too much, not knowing the full truth, but because of the classified nature of a lot of my defense, they couldn't send me back out there. So they put me under house arrest. “Who’d you piss off to get this detail?” I asked the guy who came to check on me a couple days later.

“I didn't exactly piss him off, more like made an impression on Admiral Anderson. I don’t mind, though. It’s an important job, making sure you don’t slide into despair or try to off yourself or let yourself get fat and lazy while we wait for the Reapers to show up and vindicate you,” he said.

“Wow. Musta been really bad if they coached you up that well.” I wondered why Anderson picked this guy. It wasn't a story I was likely to get out of him, though.

The guy shrugged. “Lieutenant Vega, although I guess you can just call me James with the trial and all. You need anything, you let me know. I have to filter your mail, screen calls and visitors. If there’s anything you want me to know, may as well tell me now.”

“I know I’m not allowed contact with a lot of people. And most of the people I am allowed contact with, I don’t want to talk to. Alliance Command, David Anderson, Steven Hackett, Karin Chakwas, Garrus Vakarian, Tali’Zorah vas Neema nar Rayya – I think, she may not have gone back to the Neema – Urdnot Wrex, Urdnot Grunt, Samara, Liara T’Soni, Mordin Solus, and my parents. That’s it as far as what I want to see or hear from," I lied.

James's eyes glazed over about halfway through. “I may need to you write that down for me, ma’am. Aliens, Alliance brass, and family the general gist?”

“Pretty much. And don't call me ma'am, I'm just Shepard now.” I think he could tell there were people I was leaving off. Thane. Kaidan. Jacob, Miranda, Kelly, so many others. But the only one on that list who’d be questionable was Liara, and if they knew she was questionable, then she wasn’t doing her job. Maybe Mordin, but again, STG should be able to cover enough tracks that he'd be fine. “That I’d be allowed to talk to, anyway. Don’t suppose there’s a chance in hell Joker – Jeff Moreau – could get on the approved list?”

“I’ll check into it.”

Over time, I pretty much became a recluse. Garrus, Tali, Anderson, Hackett, and Liara were the only ones I actually had much contact with at all, and Anderson was pretty much my only visitor. I was lonely as hell, I don’t mind admitting. I think James could tell.

“Commander?”

“Don’t call me that, James.” It was getting to be a routine. Nice to know at least some people still respected me, though.

“Shepard? There’s a couple people who’ve been trying to get hold of you. Want me to let ‘em through?”

“No. If they weren’t on the list I gave you, there’s a reason I’m not talking to them.” And seeing their messages would just make me want to respond, so it was best to let the filtering catch them.

“You sure? There’s one guy who’s been sending at least two messages a week…”

My heart caught, though I was pretty sure I didn’t betray anything. Had to be Kaidan. “Send him a message. Tell him to stop, if it’s bugging you to hit block that often. Probably just some lawyer who wants to make a name for himself getting me out of here.”

James wasn't convinced, but he let it go. “If you say so, ma’am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Reapers invade, everyone dies. Okay. Not everyone. But a lot of people.


	41. Reapers Invade Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard is vindicated at the cost of Reapers invading Earth. After escaping the initial chaos, she's sent to get help.

About six months after my trial, the six most boring months of my life, everything came crashing down around Earth. Literally. Anderson came to meet me and James. They thought it was Reapers. The Defense Committee suddenly wanted to see me, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not that I'd intended to say no, but it was kind of hard to take being shoved in a fancy cell for six months and then called to tell them they were idiots.

Naturally, as we were headed in, Kaidan was headed out. He looked really good, too, although that could have been not having actually seen him since Horizon, and this time he looked genuinely happy to see me.

He'd also been promoted again. Major Alenko. Now he outranked me, which I found somewhat amusing. I could imagine myself taking orders from him. I was just having trouble with the idea of him giving me orders. “Congratulations?” I offered.

“Yeah, uh, I think they’re trying to find a place where I won’t make myself a nuisance for them about the Reapers. Of course, the Reapers are doing a good job making a nuisance of themselves now, so maybe I’ll actually get some use out of the rank,” Kaidan said.

“I hope so. It’s really good to see you, Kaidan.” Shame it had taken an imminent Reaper attack to make it happen. I knew exactly whose fault that was, but still.

“Yeah. You too. I…” Anderson interrupted us to get into our meeting, but I heard James asking Kaidan if he knew me. Kaidan’s answer nearly got me to turn back. “I used to.” Unfortunately, there wasn't time.

Turns out, the committee brought me there to tell them that yes, I hadn’t been crying wolf for over a year, the Reapers were real and they were here. They didn’t like that I didn’t have a plan ready to go either. What was I supposed to tell them? I'd been trying to tell them to prepare for a long time, and I knew my friends had taken up the clamor when I couldn't anymore. All I could think of to say was “We need to stand together. We fight or we die.”

Then the Reaper hit the committee room, and there wasn’t much point in saying anything. Anderson found me a gun, and we ran for it. Made for the Normandy. I was so glad to hear Anderson talking to Kaidan I didn’t even have time to wish for a comm of my own. I hoped James had made it out with him. Anderson sent them to the Normandy, and we made for it ourselves. Anderson got me patched in just in time to hear Kaidan say he had James and they were at the ship.

Along the way, we ran into a little boy. Six years old, probably. Hiding in a duct. The great Commander Shepard couldn’t convince him to come out. So much for Shepard’s Silver Tongue, huh? A six-year-old didn’t believe me.

We lost contact with the Normandy. The last we heard from Kaidan was talking about danger and the Reapers taking out a dreadnought. But I couldn’t let that distract me. Not then. We were going to get to him, and then I could worry. We found our way to a radio where we were able to hear that they were all right and signal our position.

“Welcome aboard, Shepard.” I’d heard those words once, three years ago, from that same unmistakable voice. I could tell Kaidan was remembering the moment, too, from the wry smile.

Anderson ordered us away. When reminded I didn’t take orders, he threw tags at me and told me I was reinstated. I wondered how long he’d had those tags ready; they weren’t my old ones. My old ones were in my pocket, charred and twisted out of shape from the wreck of the first Normandy.

Leaving Vancouver in flames was hard. Leaving Anderson was harder. Watching that little boy get into a shuttle, only to see a Reaper blow it to pieces… I had to completely bury myself in the Commander to get the Normandy pointed the right way.

James wasn’t helping, with his insistence on not leaving. It’s not that I disagreed. It’s that I very much agreed, but dammit, Anderson was right. We needed unity on this, not just on Earth, but from the entire galaxy. And like it or not, pretty much every race in the galaxy respected me. I had friends among the quarians, the asari, the turians, even the geth for fuck’s sake. I was the best choice to go get them and ask for their help.


	42. The Mars Archives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard diverts to Mars at Admiral Hackett's orders, where she finds both hope and despair. Also Cerberus.

Admiral Hackett interrupted our flight to the relay to order us to Mars instead, to check in with Liara about something she was supposed to be researching that might help us fight. When we got there, the research station wasn’t responding. It didn’t take long to figure out why – Cerberus was attacking.

“Why’s Cerberus here?” James asked.

“Good question,” I said.

“You don’t know?” Kaidan asked.

My heart nearly stopped. I’d thought we’d worked past this. “I’m just as surprised as you are, Kaidan. I’m not with them."

“You have to admit, it’s a little… convenient,” Kaidan continues. No, I really didn’t.

“Didn’t you tell Cerberus to fuck off and die, Commander?” James asked.

“That is exactly what I did.” And Kaidan knew that, unless he hadn't believed me when I told him and when I testified to that effect at my trial. So what the hell?

We got inside, but before I could start the elevator, Kaidan walked up behind me. “I need a straight answer, Shepard. You really don’t know anything about why Cerberus is here?”

I’d had it with the denials. If he didn't believe me, repeating myself wasn't going to help. “Kaidan…”

“Don’t ‘Kaidan’ me! This is too serious for that. Cerberus being here while the Reapers are invading Earth?”

“What makes you think I would know something? I haven’t spoken to anyone from Cerberus in six months, unless you count Garrus or Tali or Joker!” At the time, I would have loved to see what happened if he was counting Tali. That impulse didn't last long.

“No, but you worked for them! They could have told you something, or you could have seen something about their plans,” Kaidan insisted.

In retrospect, it was kind of fair, but at the time I was so pissed at the Reapers and at Kaidan's lack of faith I couldn't be reasonable. “Let me be clear: I have had no contact with pretty much anyone in six months. When I _was_ using Cerberus to go after the Collectors, that was all I cared about. I have no more idea what’s going on here than you do.”

“They rebuilt you from the ground up, Shepard. They rebuilt the Normandy for you,” Kaidan said.

James finally jumped in. “The commander’s been under constant surveillance since her trial. There’s no way she’s communicated with Cerberus.”

The alert chimed to let us know the airlock was pressurized. “Shepard, I’m sorry. I just…”

“Kaidan, you of all people…" I couldn't finish that, his words about not knowing me anymore echoing back to me. "You should know what I’m about. I cut ties as soon as the mission was over, turned myself in. Please, trust me.”

Somehow, the stricken expression on his face didn’t feel like a victory. “I do. I’m sorry, Shepard. I trust…”

Clattering from above cut off the argument, at least for the moment. Liara dropped out of an air duct, followed by two Cerberus soldiers who she quickly killed. I was so happy to see her. She was happy to see me, too; she looked less so to see Kaidan, though she offered him her sympathy about Earth too. She was here researching the Prothean Archive to see if there was anything in there that could help us. She’d found the plans for some sort of device the Protheans had tried to build. “I’m sorry. I’d meant to come visit, but…”

“Don’t worry about it, Liara. This was more important." It was, too, and if she'd asked me six months ago I'd have told her to prepare for the Reapers and not bother about me. "I was pretty much a hermit. Even my mom didn’t come visit.”

Liara looked over at Kaidan in confusion. “You didn’t…?”

Kaidan shook his head. “She wasn’t answering my letters, and when I tried to get over to visit, I got told she was too sick for visitors. I knew it was a load of crap. Someone didn’t want me having contact.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes, or James’. I think James had worked out that he was Mr. Twice-a-Week. “Like I said… hermit. The only people who I ever really saw were Anderson or James here, and James was my prison guard.”

“If it makes you feel any better, there were a lot of other people she wasn’t answering for one reason or another,” James said.

James wasn’t happy about being sent back to the shuttle, but I had a feeling we’d need him there for a quick getaway, especially with the dust storm growing outside. We hadn’t brought a shuttle pilot with us – James didn’t know who that would be, and there was no time to go looking. Kaidan suggested that Cerberus might be working with the Reapers. It was as good a guess as any, I supposed, but something felt off about it. After all, the Reapers weren't human, and one of the few things I thought I could trust Cerberus to do was to protect humanity against all else. With the Reapers on Earth, I'd been preparing to attempt to swallow my bile enough to convince the Council to reach out to Cerberus for help.

We found a security station, where we got our first look at Dr. Eva Core, in a vid. Cerberus had blocked us from the direct route, but Liara knew the station well enough to come up with an alternate. Which led us to a room where Cerberus had opened the airlock without pressurizing the room. Damn, I hated those bastards.

“Were any of these people friends of yours?” Kaidan asked as we took out the Cerberus people and Liara started pressurizing the room. At first, I was outraged, and nearly bit his head off. Fortunately Liara interrupted in time for me to not do that when he’d been talking to her. She’d spent most of her time isolated by choice, devoted to her research. It sounded so familiar.

Kaidan found a security recording and we watched in horror as Dr. Core vented the room. Liara blamed herself for not realizing something was wrong with Dr Core, but I told her she’d done good by focusing on the Reapers. She wondered how I stayed focused through everything. I looked over at Kaidan, couldn’t help it. “I think about everything I have to live for. What I’d lose if I fail.”

“That’s a terrible burden for you to carry.” Liara got the labs unlocked. We followed Cerberus through, leaving a trail of bodies behind us. Outrunning and dodging a turret was rather entertaining. But then we found that Cerberus had made it to the Archives and locked the trams, and Liara couldn’t override.

Kaidan suggested finding a short-range communicator and pretending to be their guys. He dug a communicator out of a helmet, but recoiled in horror when the faceplate opened to reveal a very husk-like face. “They did that to their own guy? Is that what they did to you?”

“Kaidan, what the hell. How can you compare me to him?” I asked.

Kaidan sighed. “Shepard, you told me about all the cybernetics they put into you. How do you expect me not to wonder if somewhere in there, it went like this? I don’t want to hear the technology or the explanations. I don't care about the specifics of how or why. Just… promise me that the commander I followed into Hell, the woman I loved, you’re still in there.”

“I’m still here, Kaidan. Cerberus could have changed me. From their perspective, they probably should have. But they didn’t. I’m still me, and I still feel the same way I always have about you.”

Kaidan visibly relaxed. “Good. Sorry, again, Commander. I really am trying to shake these last doubts.”

“You always were stubborn,” I teased as I put in the call. Cerberus bought it, at least pretended to. Of course we shot their guys when they arrived with the tram. Then the guys who came on the second tram after bombing ours. Then the guys at the station.

Once in the Archives, I sent Kaidan to patrol the perimeter while Liara and I went to get the data. Tim was waiting on holo. He wanted to tell me again what a short-sighted destructive fool I was. I took the opportunity to call him an egomaniacal idiot some more. Tim suggested that we shouldn't be trying to destroy the Reapers but to take control. Liara interrupted the extremely satisfying conversation to tell me that the data was being erased locally.

Kaidan caught Dr. Core messing with the data. Dr. Core caught Kaidan with a foot and a right hook and ran. We chased. She jumped a shuttle, but James came flying out of the sky like a big goddamn hero and crashed into her shuttle. We were all knocked off our feet by the crash landing, but we were fine aside from Liara taking some minor bruising. Of course, then Core walked out of the burning rubble of her shuttle.

To beat Kaidan so hard I thought he was dead. Even when I’d gotten to him, gotten him over my shoulders to carry to the Normandy, even as I laid him on the bed in the med lab… I thought I’d lost him. I know Liara was saying important things about getting to the Citadel and convincing the Council to help us, but it was all I could do to force myself to keep breathing and moving and giving Joker the signal to get us out of Dodge. I managed to snap out of it on the way to talk to Hackett. He basically confirmed my orders – do whatever it took to get the other races to help us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Were any of these people friends of yours?” - Shepard's mistake is mine. Until Liara responded, I was actually thinking Kaidan was asking Shepard if any of the dead Cerberus people were friends of hers. I have no excuse for this as it was hardly my first time through the game. I wanted to slap the writers.


	43. To the Citadel for Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard deals with the Council. Help is not as forthcoming as everyone had hoped, but the turian councilor offers a plan. Then it's time to meet the new team.

I sat by Kaidan’s bed the whole trip to the Citadel. I think Liara ran interference for me. When we got there, there were medics standing by with a stretcher, ready to take him to Huerta Memorial Hospital. I wanted so badly to go with him, but responsibility first. I went to Udina’s office to deal with the Council. Then they couldn’t call me away from Kaidan when I got to the hospital, and he was less likely to still be in surgery.

The new Council was just as useless as the old one, although at least they believed the Reapers were real now. Irissa was the worst, since Thessia hadn’t even seen hints of a Reaper. I could understand Quentius’s concern; the Reapers were on Palaven too. The salarians were somewhere in between, as was Esheel. Quentius caught up to me after the meeting to offer an actual possible solution, one of the only helpful things any councilor had ever done when it came to Reapers. Rescue Primarch Fedorian from Palaven. It was better than sitting around yelling about useless allies, so I agreed.

Kaidan was out of surgery when I got to the hospital. It was really hard, looking at him lying on that bed, face bruised all to hell. Dr. Michel turned out to be his attending physician, so I knew he was in good hands – even if I was stealing another of the doctors. Dr. Chakwas was serving in a lab nearby and had come to help when she heard that someone from the Normandy had been brought in. I was really glad to see her. She belonged on the Normandy, and I told her so. She was quite happy to agree, even if she did mockingly complain about Joker and his lack of enthusiasm when it came to taking his medicine.

Once the doctors were gone and it was just me and Kaidan, I reached out and took his hand. “I can’t stay, Kaidan, not nearly as long as I’d like. But they tell me you’re probably going to recover. You’d better. I can do this without you and we both know that, but it’d be a whole lot easier with you at my side where you belong. So get well soon. The Alliance needs you. I need you. Don’t die, Kaidan. Fight. That’s an order.”

Another doctor came in then; another surgery to try to reduce the swelling in his brain. I swallowed hard and made sure they knew that if they needed anything, all they had to do was let me know. I looked back as I left. This was almost as hard as leaving Earth had been. More personal. I’d never really known Earth as a home, not until the last six months. It had been a very long time since I’d considered actually trying to live without Kaidan, or at least hope that he’d be there soon. House arrest doesn't count. That's not much of a life. More of a life than Kaidan was facing if the doctors couldn't deal with the swelling, admittedly.

I tried to sleep on the way out to Palaven. I couldn’t. Plagued with nightmares of Earth, of Ash, Jenkins, of Kaidan. I’ve been damn good – or very, very lucky. Not many people have died under my command. Liara was waiting for me when I stumbled out of my cabin to get some air. I tried to pass it off as a lack of sleep, but Liara wouldn’t have it.

“It’s Kaidan,” I finally admitted. “What happened on Mars… he nearly died, Liara. And I’m having a lot of trouble putting it behind me.”

Liara wasn't Garrus, but still, she often knew what I needed to hear. “He’s a soldier, Shepard. A very good soldier. He knows the risks. So do you. But Kaidan’s a fighter, and he knows it’s more than just his own life he’s fighting for. He’ll pull through.”

“Thanks, Liara. I think it’s just hitting home that I’m not going to get through this one without losing people. I pulled out Elysium, the chase for Saren, the Collector Base… but this is just too big, even for me. And if Kaidan’s the one to pay the price…”

Liara reached out and put a hand on my arm. “Then you’ll make the Reapers pay a hundred fold.”

We were interrupted by Comm Specialist Samantha Traynor introducing herself and offering me a tour of the changes to the Normandy. Liara took off, and I think Traynor got the wrong impression about finding her up there with me. Still, I liked what the Alliance had done with my ship. Not least getting that godawful paint job off. EDI highly recommended that Traynor stay aboard, and I was happy to have her.

Hackett called to check in. He approved of Quentius’s plan to bypass the Council and go directly to the leadership of the governments with the summit they were calling. He asked me to find everything I could that directly or indirectly could help build a fleet or the Prothean device. I agreed. I was very happy knowing that Earth was in the hands of Anderson and the fleets were in the hands of Hackett. I could only hope to live up to the faith they placed in me to be the face of humanity in the process of preparing our defense and counterattack.

We still had at least half a day before we got to Palaven, so I wandered around the ship getting to know the people I had to work with. First up: James. I’d never actually asked him about his service, and he’d forgotten I couldn’t have just read his file. Over a sparring match, he told me about his old CO, and how he’d lost nearly his entire unit to save intel on the Collectors – that ended up being unneeded because I was out playing hero. I called him on his suicidal recklessness.

“Heard you’ve got your own streak of that, Loco,” he said when he got up after I threw him down.

“Yeah. So you know I know what I’m talking about when I say there’s a line, and I’m not sure you’re on the right side of it. I crossed it once myself, right after I’d lost a good friend because I wasn’t fast enough and had to choose between her and another member of my team. And if you’re half as good as I think you are, we can’t afford to have you forgetting where the line is. Understand?”

“Got it, Loco,” James promised.

“Loco, huh? My old team would love that one.” I loved it, too.

“Yeah. So I’ve heard."

A thought hit me. "You know, all that time you were my jailkeeper... I couldn't get you to stop calling me Commander even though you really weren't supposed to. Now that I'm actually Commander Shepard again, you're gonna call me Loco?"

James shrugged, but he had a cheeky grin. "I should get back to the weapons, Loco. Thanks for the dance.”

Next up was Steve Cortez, shuttle pilot and procurement officer. I liked him right away, and he and James seemed to know each other well enough for teasing. My old Hammerhead was gone, which he explained as an attempt at giving it some actual survivability, but the shuttle was still there. Upgraded. He also commented on Cerberus’s ridiculous armory placement. I couldn’t help the laugh, remembering the early conversation with Jacob. I liked him a lot. He’d lost his husband to the Collectors, one of the colonies I’d failed to save.

I found Gregory Adams in engineering. He was feeling very guilty about not having come along for the ride with the Collectors. Chakwas had asked and he said no. I couldn’t blame him. If I’d had the choice, I might’ve said no too. He mentioned having heard something down in the hold, so I went down to check it out. Someone had stashed a lot of my model ships down there… and then I saw him. Fuzzbucket was loose down there. It took a while but I caught him and put him in a pocket for now.

Liara had brought a lot of her equipment from the Shadow Broker’s ship. She had a point – she needed access to her resources to help with the Crucible. Feron was out working for her, along with other agents she’d inherited. She’d brought the drone, which she’d named Glyph. It had already gotten into a fight with EDI. She was pouring everything she had into investigating the Reapers and the Prothean device, but it scared her, too.

Chakwas was settling in nicely. They hadn’t really changed the med bay, just cleaned it up and restocked it. Couldn’t complain about that at all. She didn’t feel the least bit guilty about Cerberus, either having worked with them or using their own resources against them. Hearing that from her put it all in perspective for me.

My cabin was pretty much the same, except that my fish were gone and my picture of Kaidan was gone. I could replace the fish, but that holo of Kaidan… I missed it. It wasn’t even a particularly good picture.

Last stop was Traynor. She was a colony girl – Horizon, as it turns out. Educated at Oxford, Alliance scholarship, and she stayed in after paying it back because she loved the service. She wasn’t entirely sure about transitioning from lab to front-line, but she had the colonist can-do attitude and the Oxford Brit stiff upper lip. She’d do fine out here.


	44. Palaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard retrieves the Primarch from Palaven. Sort of. She also finds Garrus, who joins up with her because he feels she needs him more than the turians do.

Liara and I both stared at Palaven in shock once Joker brought us out of FTL. It was glowing. Orange fire everywhere. On Earth, it had been day on the side we were on; the dark side would have looked like this. “Where’s Garrus in all that, do you think, Liara?”

“Wherever there’s a relatively quiet spot that he can use to snipe into the thickest fighting,” Liara said, and I chuckled.

James was looking curious, so I explained. “My best friend is down there somewhere. Garrus Vakarian. You should remember him, he was one of the few people who I not only didn't make you block but actually answered once in a while. His ass better be alive, because if it’s not, I’m rounding up Miranda and four billion credits and she will damn well Lazarus him back so I can kill him for getting killed before the fun started.”

Primarch Fedorian was dead, killed hours before we arrived. Of course he was. The lines of succession were clear, it was just a matter of figuring out who else was dead already. To get that information, we needed the comm tower operational. We had a task to do and we did it. The general called us back to give us the name of the new primarch, where we had a reunion with Garrus. It was all I could do not to throw myself into his arms in front of the turian military. Garrus knew the guy we were after – Adrien Victus, a general who was unconventional and willing to think sideways to get the job done.

The general tried to raise Victus on the comms, but a couple other things commanded my attention. One, a Harvester dropping off more troops. My squad and I could handle that. Two, the Normandy had started acting possessed. Liara volunteered to return and see what she could do there. Garrus offered to come with me and James. Show us how Reapers died.

We all showed how Reapers died: lots of bullets and a bit of biotics and fire. Garrus approved of my new trick, diving in and shattering my barrier to kill all the things. By the time we had a location, Garrus and I were back in sync with each other. James fit in pretty well, too. As we moved, Garrus pointed out his birth town – in the middle of the biggest, orangest blob. He was worried that the fight would get beat out of the turian military. I sure hoped not. I’d been counting on them as my main fleet.

James questioned the summit: asari and salarians and turians were all very well, but what about the batarians? The krogan? Mentally, I added the quarians and the hanar/drell and the volus. But the batarians were all but wiped out, the krogan wouldn’t come because of the genophage, and speciesism would keep the other races excluded. I had this strange feeling that no matter who else came, a human would end up refereeing the damn thing.

We found Victus’s camp under attack. He wasn’t happy when I told him we were there to take him off-world. He didn’t want to leave – understandable – and he didn’t think he’d be much of a primarch because he was a military man who pissed off the brass. I failed to see the problem there. He was willing to come, but only willing to help us if we could help him by delivering the krogan to the alliance. This would be interesting.

While Victus said goodbye to his men, Garrus came over to ask if I thought we could win. One of the things I’ve always loved about Garrus is that I can be honest, not always have to keep up the inspiring act. “Yeah, I don’t know, Garrus. What I do know is that if I don’t try, we’ve already lost.”

“And what I know is that if you can’t win this, no one else can." True or not, it helped to hear. "For what it’s worth, they don’t need me here. I’m their expert advisor, but what the hell can I tell them now they haven’t already figured out for themselves? I’m coming with you.”

“Good. James and Liara are great, but I just don’t feel right going into battle without you. And I don’t even wanna know how badly the Alliance messed up the Normandy’s guns’ calibration without you there to keep an eye on it,” I teased.

“Heh.” Garrus looked over at James curiously. “Is it safe to ask?”

I didn’t have to figure out what he meant. “Save it for when I don’t have to keep up an act.”

When we got back to the ship and I called in to report, Irissa pulled the asari out of the summit. She blamed it on the krogan invitation. Weak. Hackett agreed. So it would be the turians, the salarians, the krogan, and me. Hackett gave me updates on the Crucible, on Earth, on Cerberus. It was all pretty much the same: going poorly, get whatever I could out here, and Cerberus sucks.

As I was heading to the map to pick our next target, EDI went offline. I went to check it out and found that she’d installed herself in Eva Core’s mobile platform so she could use it for ground support. It was an interesting idea, and Joker was going to love it. I was a little miffed she hadn’t warned us she was trying things, but it was a good idea and I couldn’t hold it against her.

When I went to check on Garrus, he was reassuring Victus that he could trust me and if anyone could do the job it was me. “Hey. How bad are the guns?”

Garrus patted the console. “Bad, but fixable. Don’t worry about that. Worry about your war.”

“I know. Leaving Earth… as the Normandy escaped to safety, I watched a little boy get on a shuttle. Six years old. The Reapers blew it to Hell,” I said.

“Ouch. At least my government pretended to listen to me. Gave me a ‘task force’ so it looked like they were doing something. You know how it is – they don’t want to listen when you’re trying to warn them about something they don’t want to hear,” Garrus said.

“Until the shit hits the fan," I added. "Then they put you in charge.”

Garrus chuckled. “Unleashed Spectre, rogue C-Sec agent. We’re respectable now. Can you believe it?”

“Not at all," I said. It was the truth. I found it incredibly hard to believe that after years of belittling us and shoving us under rugs, we were supposed to be the galaxy's saviors. "But that respect comes with a lot of sleepless nights.”

“Well, when you can’t sleep… just remember I’m not sleeping any better, and I would be happy to meet you at the bar and drink you under the table. So… what’s up with Kaidan?”

I leaned back against the bulkhead and wrapped my arms around myself. “He’d be here if he could. Unfortunately, he’s lying unconscious at Huerta Memorial Hospital, beaten within an inch of his life. We were on Mars, getting Liara and the plans for this Prothean thing we’re building… get Liara to tell you about it, she understands it way better than I do… and Cerberus was there. Kaidan and I fought about that, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t care anymore. Nothing matters except that he’s fighting for his life and I wasted our first actual conversation since Horizon on fighting about Cerberus instead of trying to make things right.”

“Damn.” Garrus came to lean beside me, pulling me into an awkward hug. “You know, I was going to tell you off for cutting him off while you were under house arrest. But I can’t imagine I’d be saying anything you haven’t told yourself in the past couple days.”

“Yeah, that was stupid. I meant well, but… somehow, it doesn’t matter anymore why I did it.” I leaned into him. “Tell me about this task force you’ve been running.”

“Heh. After what happened to you I knew someone had to do something. So I did something you're not going to believe: I went to my father and laid out the evidence. The whole story, from investigating Saren to blowing the Collector base."

"And yet, you're not locked up somewhere as a crazy man?" I asked. "I wouldn't believe half of it myself if I hadn't been there."

"Nah. Dad and I might have our disagreements, but he knows a case when he sees one, and he and Primarch Fedorian were friends. He took it to the turian government. The Vakarians yelled long enough and loud enough for them to come see what the fuss was all about. Gave me a ‘task force’ so they could say they’d done something. I did everything I could get away with and then some. Didn’t end up mattering much, but who knows what Palaven would look like if I hadn’t.”

“Have you heard from your father since the attack?”

“No. Solana, either. Been long enough that I’m worried. What about you? Are your parents…?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t heard from either of them. They’re both Alliance, both of them were on ship assignments, and it’s not like it’s uncommon for us to go days without talking. Or weeks. I’ll ask Hackett next time we talk, I guess, if they're okay they'll have made it to check in with him. What do you know about Victus? Will he do what he says he will?”

“Sure. He’s a maverick, but betraying allies isn’t his style. And if he does, well… this is wartime, I’m not above playing fast and loose with strategy myself, we can always get a new Primarch.”

Somehow that made me laugh. “You know, I couldn’t help noticing how the generals were saluting you down there. Any idea how close you are to the top of the list?”

Garrus shuddered. “Let’s not go there. Victus will keep his word. Did you hear about the quarian Pilgrimage recall?”

“Ugh, yes. I’m hoping it’s Tali having convinced them to prepare for war against the Reapers, but something tells me it’s Gerrel and Xen winning the fight about going to war against the geth. After this summit, maybe I’ll go check it out, because we could sure use the quarian fleet too,” I said.

“Yeah. I hear that. Plus it’d be good to see Tali again. Even if the quarians stay out of things, she might be willing to come with us.”

“Oh? There something going on there, Vakarian?”

Garrus chuckled. “Not really. It’s just… she’s the only one who was with us through both Saren and the Collectors, and that kind of bond is…”

“You’re an idiot, Garrus. I think you two would be great together.” I straightened up and sighed. “Get my ship fixed, Vakarian. I can’t fight Reapers with miscalibrated guns. It’s damn good to have you back.”

Liara was glad to have Garrus back too. James was a little concerned about getting distracted if he and EDI came on the same mission. Somehow I suspected Joker would kill him. He told me a little about his family… dead mom, raised by an uncle because his dad was not exactly family.

“There a story there?”

“Not really. He was an asshole, that's about it."

I went to check my mail, and was glad I’d chosen to do it in my quarters when I saw the name on one of the messages. Kaidan was awake and asking for me to come see him. Another message caught my eye – Thane. He was also at Huerta Memorial. I told Joker to set course for the Citadel as soon as we were done in the Apien Crest.

Along the way, I went to check on EDI and Joker. Joker was thrilled, and hadn’t known she was doing it. Once he explained, I couldn’t help laughing – he’s right, there’s no way we wouldn’t all have known if he had. EDI wanted to know my thoughts on crew disobeying orders. I told her the truth – if my crew can’t think for themselves, then I don’t want them around. EDI, it seemed, was capable of modifying her own programming to make her own moral choices instead of following mine. I encouraged her to do that if she wanted. She may be synthetic, but why shouldn’t she have the same rights as, for example, Garrus? Garrus chose his own path, he didn’t follow me or his father or the turian hierarchy blindly. I agreed to try to answer questions when Joker wouldn’t, just in case.


	45. Huerta Memorial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes to visit Kaidan and stops along the way to catch up with Thane.

When we got to the Citadel, we had barely cleared docking procedures when I was off the ship and headed for Huerta. I found Thane first. It was good to see him. He looked great, although his disease had gotten bad enough he needed daily medical attention and he didn’t expect to live more than a few weeks.

“You look ill at ease. What’s wrong?” Thane asked after we’d caught up a little.

“Another friend of mine is here. He nearly got killed on my watch. Kaidan. He let me know he was awake and now I’m trying to work up the courage to go see him,” I said.

Thane didn't look very surprised. “The human biotic. A good man. I’ve spent some time with him. I spend most of my days here, and I saw the implant marks when he came out of his physical therapy. He told me he had been injured in the line of duty, protecting a beloved friend. He didn’t mention that the friend was you.”

He wouldn't have. “It actually wasn’t, it was another friend of ours, but I was there. It should have been me protecting her, but I lost sight of that in my anger against Cerberus.”

“Siha, it is not your fault," Thane said. "Your enemies may come here to finish him off. I give you my word, I will protect him as long as I am able.”

From Thane, that was actually the best reassurance i could have asked for. Not that Kaidan couldn't take care of himself, but it was good to know he'd have someone like Thane keeping an eye on him. “Thanks, Thane. I appreciate that. You know, you never did tell me what siha means.”

"Ah. Yes." Thane folded his hands. “Now is a good time for fulfilling old promises. It is the name given to the warrior-angels of the goddess Arashu. Fierce in wrath, but tenacious protectors. A fitting name for you.”

“I wish the best for you, Thane.”

“I have it. My medical care is excellent. Kolyat visits regularly. It is a good end to a life.”

When I got to Kaidan’s room, Udina was there. Kaidan had mentioned that Udina wanted him to become a Spectre. The Councilor was on his way out as I headed in, and we acknowledged each other civilly. It was about the best we could do.

“It’s good to see you, Shepard. Thanks for coming,” Kaidan said, rolling onto one arm. He looked like crap, still horribly bruised and battered, one eye swollen closed. Every time he moved, it hurt him. But in the eye I _could_ see, there was hope, and determination, and he really did look happy to see me.

I pulled the stool as close to the bed as I dared. “Of course I came. If Udina’s looking to knock me out of my special place as humanity’s only Spectre, I want to give my personal endorsement to his candidate.”

Kaidan grinned. Even that looked painful. “Heh. Yeah, it’s a big honor, and I just… I need to really think it through, you know? Being a Spectre’s about a lot more than just me.”

“You’re a perfect candidate, Kaidan. You’ll do great. Oh, hey, I got you this.” I handed him a bottle of Canadian whiskey I'd spotted in the gift shop on my way in. If there was anything that would raise Kaidan's spirits, that would be it. “Even if the docs won’t let you have it now, consider it a promise to celebrate with you when they let you out of here.”

“Wow. Thanks, Shepard. That’s really great.” Kaidan set the bottle aside. “You can’t tell it, but I’m tied to this bed by medical red tape. Doc keeps finding just one more test to run.”

“You’ll get out of here. Worst case scenario, call me and I’ll break you out.” Kaidan laughed. “How are you really, Kaidan?”

“It hurts all over, but the docs assure me there’s no lasting brain damage from the concussion and my body will mend up just fine, if I'll just take it easy and let it," Kaidan said. I knew for him that would be easier said than done. "But my implant got rattled, so they want me to keep the biotics offline.”

“Rattled?” That didn't sound good.

“The medical gibberish is a lot more impressive, but that’s what I took away from it. One of the docs here actually specialized in L2 implants, doing assessments for reparations and stuff, and I’ve become her pet project," Kaidan said. I wondered if Ashley had gotten her god to send Kaidan a favor, because that was about the luckiest thing I could imagine. "She’s got me on this crazy regimen of acupuncture, meds, and this nasty-tasting concoction, but on the rare occasion she lets me use them, my biotics are stronger than ever. I guess some things just get better with age.”

“Or maybe you have,” I said before I could think about it.

“Are you flirting with me, Shepard? No, don’t tell me. Just let me believe what I want to.” Kaidan forced himself to sit up a little, looking over at me seriously. “I just want to make sure… after Mars, after Horizon. You and me… we’re good?”

I sure hoped so. “We’ve been to hell and back together, Kaidan. That’s a bond that’s hard to break. We’re good.”

“No, I don’t just mean that, Shepard. Sure, you were my commander, but you were a lot more than that.” Kaidan reached out, clasping my hand. “You were someone I could talk to about Rahna, and you never judged me. Not for killing Vyrrnus, not for letting Rahna break my heart. We went through Ash’s death together. So. Are we good?”

“Yeah, Kaidan. We’re good. I’ve missed you.”

“Same here," Kaidan said, lying back into a relatively comfortable position. "The Normandy, too. Being back aboard, even just for a couple hours… it really hit home just how much I loved it. How much I like you. We’re good together, Shepard.”

“Yes, we are. And when you get out of here, there’s a spot on the Normandy just waiting for you to come fill it. Probably more than one, as I recall you were never happy with just one job to do,” I teased. I wasn't joking about wanting him on the Normandy, though. Whatever he did with Udina's offer, he would always be welcome on my ship.

“Heh. True enough. And you’ve got to be shorthanded, although if I know you you’ll pick up a crew easily enough. Did Liara stick around?”

“Yeah, and I've got James, and Joker, and the new people seem pretty great. The two I work with most both have someone I already knew who specifically says so - James knew the shuttle pilot from before, and EDI has a lot of respect for Traynor, my comm specialist. Chakwas came with us after we dropped you off here, and remember Engineer Adams? He's running engineering again. He's not Tali, but I'm really glad to have him," I said. "Oh, and Garrus was there when we went to get the Primarch. He felt useless with the turians, so he’s with the Normandy again.”

“Garrus… that’s good to hear. If anyone can keep you alive, it's him.” He shifted position again. “Commander… I know what you said last time I asked, but are you and he…”

“No. I’m not going to lie to you, after our fight on Horizon I got drunk and stupid and tried to start something, but Garrus stopped me as soon as he figured out what I was doing and knocked some sense into me. He’s my best friend. I can let down the act around him, I don’t have to be the commander when I need to just be me. But there’s nothing between us that you have any reason to feel threatened over. More like family.” Kaidan relaxed, accepting it. “Speaking of family… have you heard from your parents or sisters? I know your parents live in Vancouver…”

“Yeah. They were on their way to an orchard the family owns in central BC the day of the attack. I know the shuttle left because I was there to wave them off. I haven’t heard from them, but… Dad was Alliance. So I have hope that his training has kept them alive. Aura lives at the orchard with her husband and kids. Emma’s Alliance, like me. I haven’t heard from her, either, but if she’s alive, then I know she’s with Hackett and in the best possible hands. I’m sure my parents are going out of their mind with worry wondering where I am. What about your parents?”

I kind of felt a little guilty that I hadn't gotten around to asking. “Like you said about Emma… if they’re alive, they’re with Hackett. So, Major…”

“Heh. Yeah. ‘Major.’ Anderson asked me to lead a special ops division for biotics, focused on high-risk covert missions. I turned him down at first. A teaching job, me? But you know how persistent he can be, and eventually I agreed. At least if I’m teaching them, I know they don’t have a Vyrrnus in charge, you know?” Kaidan said.

Good for Anderson. It was exactly the kind of job Kaidan would have been perfect for, including the perfect leverage to get him to accept it. “It’s a good job for you. Even in the Alliance, some people still look at us like freaks.”

“Even the asari look at human biotics as freaks sometimes, because it’s so new to us. But you have to embrace it, or you go crazy and do stupid stuff. Like red sand. But I don’t have to tell you that.”

“Yeah, I know that.” We fell silent for a moment, and I stared at some of the bruises. “Are you sure you want to jump straight back into things the second they let you out of here?”

Kaidan sat up a little, and I swear he'd have saluted if he weren't in so much pain. “Yes ma’am. People who’ve had near-death experiences sometimes say their life flashed before their eyes, well, for me, it was the future. The anguish, the families torn apart, the children left orphaned or never born… I have to do something to save lives. And I’m pissed. At the Reapers, at Cerberus. I want to kick their asses straight to Hell. That’s how I survived, the anger and the need to save some lives.”

“You’re a good man, Kaidan.” I took a couple of deep breaths, looking for my courage. “Speaking of Cerberus… can we get it out there? Whatever doubts you still have, whatever issues are still lingering from Horizon, lay them on me so we can deal with them and put them behind us.”

“Shepard, I don’t…" Kaidan stopped and took a moment before starting over. "I’ve never doubted that if you were the real Commander Shepard, that there were damn good reasons for every decision you made. Horizon’s done. I said some really stupid things, and I own that. Once again, because you haven’t ever actually heard it from me, I’m sorry for the way I acted. I’d spent two years grieving for you, and I still hadn’t really dealt with it, you know? And then there you were. With Cerberus. I couldn’t accept even the possibility that it was really you until well after I’d walked away. On Mars, when I asked if you knew what Cerberus was there for, I really did just mean because you’d worked with them before and might have picked up some hint of other plans. But I was angry at you for cutting me off during your house arrest, and I came off combative when I didn’t mean to.”

Fair enough. “I’m sorry about that. I thought I was doing the right thing, shielding you from any potential blowback for being associated with me, but staring at you in the med lab on the way to get you here, all I could think of was that I’d wasted six months on stupidity and stubbornness. Openly supporting me doesn’t seem to have hurt Hackett or Anderson any. What about the husk thing, though?”

“I don’t know what they did to you, Shepard. All the cybernetics and stuff they put in there, I don’t know if that was necessary or if they were improving you or if they were trying to control you. If they were trying to control you, they failed. I’m still worried there’s some long con, some switch in there they can flip to turn you. But you’re you, at least for now, and I don’t want to waste any more time on doubting that.”

“The thought has occurred to me. It’s why I want you and Garrus close; if I start changing, the two of you will see it before anyone. So. Horizon, Aratoht, Mars, those are behind us, we’re good?”

Kaidan reached out and clasped my hand again. “We’re good. I should probably get some rest now, though, I can see Erin staring at me through the window with a look of extreme disapproval on her face. My L2 specialist.”

“Rest up, Kaidan. We need you at a hundred percent if you’re gonna be a Spectre and back on the Normandy. But I’m glad we had this chance to talk." I let go of Kaidan's hand and stood up, but something occurred to me. "Oh, before I go… you talked to a drell earlier?”

“Yeah. Tannor. Dying, but at peace with it. I liked him,” Kaidan said.

“Tannor’s an alias he’s using. His real name is Thane Krios. He was at the Collector base with me. He’s promised to look after you for me, in case our enemies come calling.”

“You’re Siha? I guess I do remember you mentioning something about Thane asking you for help with his son… and Tannor's son Kolyat told me all about how his father saved him from a really bad situation,” Kaidan said.

“Yeah, uh, that’s what he’s taken to calling me. And now I really should get going, that doctor is starting to scare me,” I said. "Get better."


	46. Grissom Academy

While we were on the Citadel, I figured I might as well get some shopping done. There’s no such thing as a well-enough stocked arsenal, not in a war like this. I ran into EDI and got embroiled in the most awkward conversation about sex and dating I’ve ever had, including when my dad tried to explain things to me when I was twelve. Mom had to try again a year or so later, because all I got out of that conversation was awkward and gross.

Aria wanted to meet with me. She had some merc groups from Omega she thought would be willing to help us if I’d finalize the deals. She’d been kicked out of Omega by Cerberus, and was working on a plan to retake it, but wasn’t ready yet. I had to get a prisoner released from jail by Bailey, and meet with the other two merc leaders.

Bailey refused. I hadn’t expected anything different. I agreed to meet with the prisoner in person, and then I understood. I came up with an alternate plan – get the second-in-command to take over. Another merc group had the same idea, except they used me as bait to execute the current leader. The Blue Suns weren’t so easy. The leader wanted me to assassinate a turian general, who turned out to be my old friend from the Consort’s request. That felt so long ago. I refused to kill him, but I was able to work out a deal where I’d find him another weapons source if he left the Blue Suns alone.

While running around the Citadel, I ran into Jondum Bau, a Spectre who believed that there was an indoctrinated hanar running around. That was bad, so I agreed to help him out. He’d gotten his information from Kasumi, who had pieced it together from the greybox we’d destroyed. Following the clues led us around the Citadel, but we found the hanar. He threatened to blow up a planet, but we were able to stop him. Kasumi faked her death to get Bau off her back, and agreed to help out with the Crucible, since I couldn’t get her to come with me on the Normandy. I didn’t have Jacob.

Speaking of the Normandy, while using my Spectre resources, I found that Ken Donnelly and Gabby Daniels were being considered for pardons. As a Spectre, not only could I grant them, I could invite them back to the Normandy. They were both glad to be back, and Adams loved them. Especially Daniels.

I also ran into Kelly Chambers down in the docking area. She’d left Cerberus and was working with the refugees, using her counseling training to help them deal with the trauma. It was great to see her, and better to hear that she’d realized who she was working for and quit. She took my fish, too. But she gave them back, now that she knew I was alive. I invited her to come, but she’d been through her own trauma and couldn’t. I couldn’t blame her for that.

When I got back to my ship, Traynor approached me. She’d found something she thought was suspicious – a distress signal from Grissom Academy. The turians had answered, but she thought it sounded off, and EDI determined that the signal was faked. Like the one Tim had used to get us to the Collector ship. No time to waste – we set out to rescue the kids.

Traynor and EDI were right – it was Cerberus, not the turians. Kahlee Sanders found us a way in, and we made our way to her at the security checkpoint. She turned out to be an old friend of Anderson’s, which was good to know. There were students left behind – tech geniuses, biotics training as shock artillery. We found some of them in the halls, and then the biotics team.

Jack was leading it. She looked great. She took a swing at me for Cerberus, which, whatever. When it came to Cerberus, Jack had earned whatever punches she wanted to throw. I could hear Garrus snickering. She actually cared about her students, which was surprising but extremely good news. The Cerberus guys tried to convince them to switch sides, saying we couldn’t help them. Jack took this extremely poorly. She and her biotics squad helped cover us while my team drew Cerberus’s fire. We rescued a couple more students, and found David Archer alive and well. He looked so much better. He even apologized to me and Garrus for what happened.

Kahlee called us, said we had to go while Normandy had the cruiser out of position. We got out, and I recommended we use the biotic students in support roles. They weren’t happy about it, but both Jack and Kahlee looked a little relieved. I also learned that Jack promised to watch her language. Joker found this hilarious.

Anderson called once he got Hackett’s report. After some banter about whether I was allowed to call him sir, he let me know things on Earth were hell, but they were slowly pulling together a resistance. I passed along Kahlee’s message to stay alive, and he found it amusing.

I stopped by to commend Traynor on her work. She told me I should probably go check on Cortez. It felt a little wrong; he was listening to a recording of his last conversation with his husband. He’d thought he’d moved on. He’d tried to. But he was discovering that he hadn’t, and he felt alone. Well, he wasn’t, and I made sure he knew that. Caught James looking our way a couple times, too.

I had a summit to get to. But first, I needed to drop some things off at the Citadel. Miranda had asked me to meet her there, too. Oriana’s security system had gone dark, and Miranda didn’t know what was going on. She didn’t want my help, except in a supportive way as her friend, but she was sure it had something to do with her father.

Speaking of fathers, Liara was being spied on by hers. Matriarch Aethyta, the bartender from Illium with the Verner Bullshit Detector, who’d moved to the Citadel. Liara didn’t think it was the time for family reunions. But if not now, when was? I convinced Liara to go over and talk.

Kaidan was out of bed looking out the window. “Good to see you back in uniform,” I teased as I came in.

“Thanks. Hey. They’re letting me out soon, and, well, I didn’t exactly have time to grab any other clothes when we left Earth,” Kaidan said.

Of course, he was on the Citadel, and from the way his uniform fit him, it's not like his size would have changed enough to where he couldn't requisition something else to wear. But that wasn't the reason. “Yeah. It’s not like wearing anything else feels right to me, either. And you’ve been Alliance all along. I hear you accepted Udina’s offer, Spectre Kaidan Alenko.”

“Guess I have to get used to that, huh. It’s humbling. Udina thinks they’re going to have a big ceremony, even with everything else going on. Hope it’s as short as yours was. Wouldn’t feel right if they made a bigger deal over me than you,” Kaidan said.

“I barely remember mine, I was so exhausted from all the running around we’d done getting Garrus and rescuing Tali and solving the problems of every other Citadel resident,” I said.

Kaidan laughed, and it was great to see him do that without pain. “That was a long day, but I remember the ceremony. And the speech you gave after, on the Normandy. When you joked with Conrad about making me and Ash Spectres, that’s what I thought about. Hoping I could live up to that, if this ever happened. You’ve set the bar pretty high, you know.”

“I wasn’t joking, Kaidan. And if even Udina can see that the Spectres need you, I think I was justified.” A thought struck me then. “So, when they start making the vids… who’s your plucky sidekick who keeps you going when the chips are down? I’m not letting you take Garrus.”

“Anyeon Parks,” Kaidan said promptly. “One of my spec ops students. Remember the Draven twins from the old Normandy? Take Rosamund’s energy and optimism and combine it with Talitha’s way with words and lack of filter. Then pack it into something the size of your average twelve-year-old girl. Annie wasn’t twelve, but she was tiny.”

I laughed. “Sounds perfect. Any word from them?”

“Nah, but if they were easily found, I’d be extremely disappointed in them. Spec ops, you know? I did get word from Emma, she’s with the Third Fleet under Hackett. Oh, and you’ll love this: serving under Captain Hannah Shepard. Your mom has no idea who she is.” Kaidan stopped and made a face. “That came out wrong. I mean, she has no idea that Emma’s brother is a friend of yours. She knows who Gunnery Chief Emma Alenko is.”

“Guess I’ll have to tell her,” I said. “Small galaxy, huh?”

“Yeah. You don’t have to say anything to your mom, I just think it’s a nice coincidence.”

“Still, I really should send my mom a message. Anyway, I have to go… they’re finally ready to get this summit going. Take care of yourself, Kaidan… you’re not a hundred percent yet, I can tell.”

“Be careful out there, Shepard. Tell Wrex I said hello and to play nice with the turians and salarians.”

On the way back to the ship, I ran into Diana Allers. She wanted to come on the Normandy and broadcast from there. I hate reporters, except Emily Wong, but she did have a point about the press making or breaking morale. I figured I’d just avoid her as much as possible.


	47. Sur'Kesh, Rachni, and Cerberus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard gets to work saving the galaxy. Or at least the krogans. Cerberus does not make it easy on her.

When we got to Sur’Kesh, Wrex and Dalatrass Linron were waiting for us. Negotiations started badly. Then Wrex told us what it would take: a cure for the genophage. And he knew where to start: the salarians had female krogans captive, survivors of Maelon’s experiments. Cured female krogans. The dalatrass did everything she could to delay, stall, even straight up lie, but Victus, Wrex, and I provided a united front against her. She called me a bully. I considered punching her for that.

Liara and Garrus volunteered to come with us. Somehow it felt right. We ran into trouble nearly right away, with the STG team trying to not let us land. Wrex forced the issue. Fortunately one of the base leaders cleared things up before things got ugly. They wouldn’t let Wrex come into the base, and in the interest of peace, I convinced him to stay behind and trust us.

We bumped into Major Kirrahe. That was nice. He remembered us from Virmire, and was intending to come help us out again when the time came no matter what the dalatrasses said. That was good to hear. We met Mordin in the lab, which was another nice surprise. He was Wrex’s inside source. He’d become attached to the krogan females. Only one had survived, but he was determined to do what he could to help her.

The female wasn’t stupid in the least. She was worried I was there to kill her, since as the last survivor, she was extremely dangerous to a lot of people. Cerberus, for example. They’d showed up to try to kill everyone to get to her. I haven’t got a clue what Cerberus cared about the genophage, but they did, apparently.

Couldn’t let the opportunity to tease Liara go to waste when a yahg got free, but for the most part, we kept focused on getting Mordin and the female out of there. Cerberus was relentless, but I had this thing where I just loved shooting them. Or charging them and then novaing their asses. Shotgun, dark energy, as long as it left Cerberus corpses, who cared?

I couldn’t help but laugh when the female ignored the hand Wrex offered, stole his shotgun, and shot the last couple Cerberus guys herself. I think Wrex fell a little bit in love at that point.

Victus wanted krogan help now, but Wrex held out for an actual cure, not just the promise of one. I could see both of their points, but Wrex was the one who had the power right now. Mordin needed time to work, so we were looking for other things to do. Wrex had lost contact with a group he’d sent out to the rachni relay. Victus had lost contact with a platoon on Tuchanka but wouldn’t tell me why they were there. There was plenty to be done.

We went out to the rachni relay first. I needed to know if the queen had betrayed me. She’d been quiet for so long, I couldn’t imagine she’d break her word now. On the other hand, she kept talking about a sour yellow note that turned her people mad years ago. If the Reapers had done it again… it didn’t bear thinking about.

EDI sorted out some logistics for when it was time to take the krogans to Palaven – transport, food, keeping them under control on the ships. Cortez was, as usual, working his ass off. I tried to convince him to take some time off. Sure, I got that he was keeping busy to keep from thinking about his husband, but the human brain isn’t meant to function without some downtime, and not just sleeping.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Pot, kettle. At least Cortez didn’t call me on it.

At least Garrus could make me laugh by joking about the krogan love of facial scarring.

We landed to find Aralakh Company waiting – under the command of Urdnot Grunt. Best surprise I could have asked for. Elite squad of krogan commandos from all different clans, with Grunt to keep them in line. Loved it. He was going to kick some ass and we knew it.

The mission didn’t start well, with a prefab falling into a hole and taking my squad with it. Led us right to the tunnels, though, so there was that. The tunnels were crawling with webbing and darkness and various ugly pods… and wires that looked very much like Reaper tech. We were able to confirm rachni – or more accurately, Reaper-fied rachni.

The scout team had sacrificed themselves, carrying weapons deep into the halls so we could get through. It was a shame, but I couldn’t blame them. The rachni were obviously breeding an army for the Reapers. We fought our way to the queen.

People hear of my reputation for recklessness and immediately think of the biotics and the shotgun. It’s rather funny when they meet me and see the Black Widow on my back. No one expects me to be a sniper too. That takes patience and concentration – completely against my rep. I encourage that, usually. Then no one sees it coming when I take them out from afar. I just usually don’t have to rely on my sniper rifle, because I have Garrus. But against the rachni, that rifle was a godsend, because it meant I could kill the breeders without breaking the egg sacs and having swarmers to deal with.

The queen was badly wounded and needed time to escape. The price of that time was Aralakh Company. I didn’t have long to think or I’d lose them both. I owed the krogan a lot, and Grunt was my friend, but I could not commit genocide. Aralakh Company held the line. They took heavy losses, but we got out of there with the queen. Grunt nearly died holding off a huge wave of rachni on his own. It was so bad when he came out I couldn’t tell how much of the blood sluicing off him was his and how much was rachni. But we got him out alive. Wrex wasn’t happy about me letting the rachni live again, but it didn’t change his support.

Anderson called to check in. He offered sympathy on having to deal with the bureaucrats. They got out of Vancouver, but were basically on the run, not quite able to fight back in any meaningful way yet. The Reapers were focusing on cities, so they could find places to hide, but that wasn’t going to last.

Cerberus was terrorizing civilians on Benning. Supposedly they were taking volunteers, but there were rumors of taking people against their will – and I knew Cerberus. On the way, I went to go catch up with Mordin and get to know Eve. Wrex was in there hassling Mordin about being untrustworthy. I think he was annoying Eve. Mordin was doing well. He still thought Maelon’s experiments were barbaric and unworthy, but was glad we’d saved the data. He was still defending the genophage, but acknowledged that the time for a cure had come.

Eve was a female shaman, which is why she was going by the moniker Eve instead of her real name. She’d found hope in her first stillborn, which I thought was a very odd view, but it worked for her. After all, that hope is what let her hold on through hundreds of years of the genophage, and then Maelon’s experiments. She thought Wrex had the potential to be a great leader, and she hoped he could actually change the krogan people. She gave me a crystal that had been her candle in the darkness when she was undergoing her trials. I’ve kept it in my pocket ever since.

Come to think of it, I still have it. I wonder if I can reach it…

Liara was upset because she’d been working through some calculations. She was asari. Even if it took as long to conquer our cycle as it had the Protheans, she could live to see it all. Centuries of devastation, knowing that we had failed. I suppose she had a point – maybe there was an advantage to only expecting to live a century and a half. Of course she insisted on giving me credit for the fact that we were still fighting.

I found Garrus telling old war stories to one of the ensigns, in his usual way of playing up the more fantastic elements of the story while blowing it off as no big deal. The ensign’s face was a thing of beauty as he tried to decide whether to believe or not. When I came over to lean against the arm of the couch, he apparently decided to believe. Garrus noticed and started spinning bullshit. I gave him a good punch before walking off again, and heard the delightful confusion from Ensign Copeland.

I also learned that Garrus doesn’t like spiders much. I filed that away for later.

Benning was a nightmare – Cerberus was just gunning people down in the streets. It wasn’t like Cerberus. Abducting people yes, just shooting them, no. Not humans. We cleared out a foothold so that the regular strike forces could get in and fully liberate the colony.

Cerberus was also up to something on Tuchanka. That made very little sense, so we went to check it out. As it turned out, they’d hijacked a ground-to-air cannon to clear a path for a cruiser to commence orbital bombardment of Tuchanka. We fixed that easily enough.

They were also messing with a lab up in Sigurd’s Cradle. Studying Reaper tech. We liberated the lab and the tech and the lovely data they had on it. It was a good hit.

Flying around between Cerberus missions, Vega and Cortez had some amusing debates about whether Cortez was doing his job, considering how often we got shot at. Cortez won when he pointed out that sure, he’d flown through a lot of fire, but he’d never taken just a whole lot despite the crappy maneuverability of the Kodiak.

Chakwas and Adams were having a chat about Adams not joining us. Adams still felt bad about not coming with us on the Collector mission. I thought I’d reassured him that it was okay, that I was just glad to have him now, but he was still feeling bad about it. Like he was a coward. Fortunately, Chakwas managed to get him to at least stop dwelling on it. I was just happy that it meant he didn’t have to go through the Collector abduction. Even Chakwas, strong as she was, was still having nightmares about it.

Liara had been working on a recording of everything our cycle had learned about the Reapers, just in case. She wanted to show it to me and get my opinion on my entry. I trusted Liara to represent me the way I needed to be, instead of going over the top with the heroism or telling them the truth about how I was just a stubborn soldier who didn’t know when to lay down and die. Although maybe that time has come...


	48. Citadel and Tuchanka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard uses unorthodox strategy to defeat a Reaper. She also facilitates the genophage cure.

Mordin was almost ready, so we hit the Citadel for supplies and a quick stock check. Also dropping off some things we’d found in our wandering for transport to the Crucible. I went by the hospital to see Thane, and he told me that sure enough, Kaidan was out. The two had become pretty good friends, though. Adams had asked me to look out for a part, and I found it for him in one of the shops. 

I swear I didn’t know, but I heard that Kaidan’s official Spectre ceremony was happening while we were stopped. Of course I went. It was short, but the crowd was huge, and my crew told me it was broadcast on pretty much every screen in the Citadel – and it wasn’t until near the end that the camera operators spotted me in the crowd, so the focus stayed on Kaidan where it belonged until it was almost over.

Of course, that wasn’t in time for the cameras not to have picked up me finding him and shaking his hand, but I knew that was going to be on camera. So I kept it cool.

“Hey, Spectre Alenko. Congratulations.”

“Shepard?” Kaidan looked extremely surprised to see me. “Thanks. It’s good to see you. How did you know to be here?”

“I didn’t. Total coincidence. We’re about to cure the genophage so I wanted to make sure Mordin has everything he needs before we head for Tuchanka. I found out this was happening about an hour ago,” I said.

Kaidan laughed. “Yeah, I found out about two hours ago or I’d have sent you a message to tell you. I think Udina was trying to avoid having you here. Whether that was supposed to be a favor to me or he just doesn’t like you, well, hard to say.”

“I wish I could stay longer, you probably have all kinds of meetings and stuff to go to, but like I said…”

“Curing the genophage," Kaidan finished for me. "Because of course you are. Next time you’re coming, get me a heads’ up and I’ll find some time to get the full story out of you, because that’s incredible. Don’t I still owe you lunch at Apollo’s?”

“Sure thing. I think that’s long enough for the press to have gotten their shots, so I should go. But I’m so happy for you, you deserve this,” I said. I leaned forward and gave him a quick hug.

“Yeah. Right. I’m just trying to live up to your example, Shepard.”

On the way out, I got ambushed by Khalisah bint-Sinan al-Jilani. I think a lot of people were sick of her disingenuous assertions, because she ducked the punch I finally threw. She didn’t duck the headbutt, though. Shouldn’t have asked me why I ran away from Earth. I hate that woman.

I can still hear Garrus’s snickering as he told me about the news report. Not al-Jilani’s. Another group that was carrying the Spectre ceremony. They’d overheard the question, too, and that was the focus of the piece – do not accuse Shepard of running away, because she didn’t. And it will not end well for you.

When we got back to Tuchanka, there was a damn Reaper parked on the Shroud, the tower we were going to use to distribute the cure. Because of course there was. To make matters worse, Dalatrass Linron called and asked me to sabotage the cure. I was going to lose salarian support if I didn’t. I told her I’d think about it. There was nothing to think about. The salarians would come around if they got their backs up against the wall. Wrex wasn’t stupid. He’d figure out the sabotage and come after me. And then there was Mordin. He’d recognize the sabotage and correct it. If I tried to stop him, I’d probably have to kill him. I told the team what Linron had asked – I wanted it known exactly why the salarians weren’t helping the combined war effort. If they didn’t come around, I wanted them to be the most hated race in the galaxy after the Reapers were gone.

We met with the krogan clans. Things were going poorly because of Wrex’s brother, Wreav. Until Eve showed up and kicked some sense into everyone. Victus called in a turian air team and Wrex assembled krogan ground forces. The plan was that Mordin and Eve would slip in, with me and my team for protection, while the krogans and turians distracted the Reaper. The plan, of course, failed. There was a damn bridge out. If Wrex would let me drive, that wouldn’t be a problem, but nooo, he thought I was too crazy.

Instead, the turian wing aborted the airstrike early while the tanks backed up and tried to find a way around, and I took my team through some ancient tunnels. We emerged into a surprisingly pretty part of Tuchanka. There was green around. According to Eve, it was about the only plant life left on Tuchanka. Between Kalros and the rachni, getting back to Wrex took a lot longer than it should have.

Once we did, Eve had an idea for dealing with the Reaper. Kalros was supposed to be the mother of all thresher maws. What would happen in a Kalros vs. Reaper death match? All we needed was a distraction, so it didn’t matter who won the fight. Worth a try. All we had to do was hold off the Reaper ground forces long enough to hit two gongs and summon Kalros. Before we left, Wrex named me a hero of the krogan and his sister. That was a surprise, but a welcome one. If I survive, sometime I’ll have to ask if that means I can call myself Urdnot Shepard.

So, I can say I have run across a krogan temple to a thresher maw, while getting shot at by a Reaper, with the intent of summoning the maw queen. As far as I know, my team and I are the only people to have that particular experience. Makes for a hell of a story. I’m not sure I’d have believed it if I hadn’t been there.

Kalros won the deathmatch, by the way.

To counteract the STG sabotage, Mordin had to go up the tower. There was no way he’d survive, and he knew it. I didn’t want to let him go, but that was the right thing for the krogans. And for Mordin. He wanted to fix his mistake, and believed it was his responsibility. He was right. It had to be him. Someone else would have gotten it wrong.

If I survive, I’m going to bring seashells to Mordin’s grave.

Wrex kept his end of the bargain, so Victus kept his. The turians were ready to deploy to Earth whenever I called for them. The salarians were out of it, and Hackett was just hoping we wouldn’t need them. I was hoping that Kirrahe could influence the STG. And of course that there would be political pressure.

Garrus made me go get some sleep. I had the dream of the little boy, but this time, I could hear Ash and Mordin whispering to me. Things they’d said just before I got them killed. I was losing it, I knew it. When I woke up, though, I was able to tell myself that given what I’d gone through, what I’ve put my teams through… I was lucky it was only Ash and Mordin I was hearing in my dreams. Liara interrupted before I could answer the question about how many more people would be joining them before this was all over to let me know I had a call.

I was surprised that the political pressure on the salarians might come from Esheel, who called and asked me to meet her on the Citadel. Udina was moving a large amount of money in ways I wouldn’t like, but she couldn’t say more over the comm. Hackett called to check in again, and to update me on how things were looking with the Crucible. It was still a pretty grim outlook.

I was too wound up to go back to sleep. I set course for the Citadel and then listened to Garrus and Joker swapping jokes for a while. There were some good ones in there. Garrus walked me out, joking about hiring a food taster for Wrex. He was worried about what happened with the krogan if Wrex stopped running the show. I was too, but between Wrex and Eve, I felt like the krogan were in good hands and would become productive members of the galactic community. Garrus admitted he might have been tempted by the salarian deal. He was glad I didn’t take it, though. No need to destroy a race to save the galaxy.

Right. You know, all the genocides I could have committed or contributed to or at least not ended... someone out there has a cruel sense of humor.

Allers wanted an interview about the genophage cure. I gave it to her. Hope I didn’t come off too hostile as I defended my friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still waiting on my thresher maw gun.


	49. The Citadel Cerberus Coup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cerberus tries to take the Citadel. It goes no better for them than it did for the Reapers.

When we got to the Citadel, we found chaos. Eventually, Thane was able to get through to me. Cerberus had taken over the place. Kaidan was protecting the Council, while Thane was trying to retake C-Sec headquarters. That sounded like the place I was needed, so I got a team together and took the shuttle to the Presidium.

Esheel was in C-Sec, or she was dead. Bailey got us in, discovered she was meeting with the executor. The only thing that made any sense at all was that Udina was working with Cerberus. Thane was on his way to us, but I could hear the labored breathing. We fought our way to the executor’s office to find him dead. Esheel was still alive, but she got ambushed by an assassin.

Thane drove off the assassin, but in the process took a sword through the belly. He told us to go get the assassin and the Council. Esheel confirmed that Udina was staging a coup and intended to kill the other councilors. We took a C-Sec car, but the assassin disabled it. Bailey got the Council’s transponders and was able to locate them for us. Their guards were dead. Dammit, Kaidan was guarding the Council, Thane had said. I had to shove that aside, though.

It ended up being an exciting elevator chase – our elevator trying to catch the one the Council was on while not getting stopped by Cerberus. When we got to the Council, I heard Kaidan shouting instructions. And danced around the shots he fired, but he didn’t know it was us. Cerberus had destroyed the shuttle so they were on their way back to the elevator by the time we got out.

“Shepard? What’s going on?” he asked, eyes going wide when he recognized me.

“It’s Udina. He’s working with Cerberus, trying to seize power.” I silently begged Kaidan to believe me on this one. He had a gun on me. My group had ours lowered, but still ready.

“You have no proof of this! You never do,” Udina challenged.

Irissa of all people stood up for me. “It’s unlikely, but it is possible.”

“Shepard’s the one with Cerberus, not me!” Udina shouted. It was going to be hard to argue that one.

Kaidan didn’t lower his gun, but he did look uncertain. “Shepard? You have to admit, you’ve got a gun on a councilor, it looks bad here.”

I pointed behind me. “Cerberus forces are in that elevator. Open it and we’re all dead. They sent an assassin after Esheel. She’s the one who told me about Udina.”

“Screw this! We need to get out of here. I’m opening the elevator.” Udina stepped over to the panel. I brought my gun up and aimed it at him.

Kaidan stepped between me and Udina. But then, he looked between us. “I better not regret this.” He lowered his gun, turned and took a step back, and raised the gun again. “Step away from the console, Udina.”

“No!” Udina kept working. Irissa stepped up to grab his arm. He knocked her to the ground and drew a gun on her. I didn’t think. I shot.

Kaidan was a little stunned, until Quentius pointed behind us. “The elevator’s opening!” We all turned to look, guns at the ready.

Bailey stepped off. “Shepard! …Well. I see the situation’s under control.”

“Wait. I thought you said Cerberus was right here,” Irissa said.

“Cerberus was right here, until they heard us coming and beat feet for the keeper tunnels,” Bailey explained. “Sorry to say it, but Shepard just saved all your lives.”

“Then… thank you,” Quentius said. “I owe you for this, and for brokering the deal between the primarch and the krogan.”

“No, you don’t. This is a time when we all need to stand together. I’m just doing my job,” I said. Maybe, this time, they'd actually listen to me about standing together and not bicker amongst themselves.

“Shepard… do you have any idea why Cerberus would do this? Why Udina would?” Kaidan asked. “How could this possibly benefit them?”

“I get Udina’s motives – if he controls the Citadel, he has more pressure to bring against the other races to help Earth. In the end, I really think that’s what it was about, for him," I said. I'd hated the man. He was a bully and in a lot of ways a xenophobe. But misguided though it was, I really do believe he believed he was working in Earth's best interests. Either that or he'd been indoctrinated somehow. "Cerberus… I have no clue. Before all this I'd have said they wanted an entirely human council. Maybe that's still true. Maybe they just wanted the chaos. But I promise you, I intend to find out.”

Bailey reminded us we had a Citadel to secure, so we left to do that. We couldn’t find the assassin at all, even on camera feeds. Bailey told me to get out of there, that things didn’t look good for Thane and if I wanted to say goodbye, I needed to get there quickly.

Kolyat was with him. “Siha. The end is here. It was a good death. I go to cross the sea. Irikah will be waiting.” It was hard listening to Thane trying to speak through lungs that couldn't get the oxygen into his body.

“That she will. Thane… you’ll be remembered as a hero. The salarian councilor said to let you know that,” I said.

“That assassin should be embarrassed. A terminally ill drell stopped him from reaching his target.” If it were anyone else, I'd have thought they were making a joke. Thane... if it was, it would be the first joke I'd ever heard from him.

“I’ll pass the message along, when I take him down,” I promised.

Together, the three of us prayed for Thane. I thought. Turned out, Thane intended the prayer for me. He slipped off while Kolyat and I read our verses.

The Citadel was a mess, so I stayed and pitched in to help with some of the cleanup. Using Spectre status to authorize some red tape cutting, shutting off a terrorist’s life support, hunting down Balak after all these years and getting him on board with the war effort instead of putting several bullets in him like I wanted to, that sort of thing. I found Steve at the memorial wall, finally letting go of his husband for real.

When I was exhausted enough that I thought I could get by without dreaming, I headed back to the Normandy. Kaidan was there waiting for me. “Kaidan! Hey. I was wondering where you’d gotten to. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m… I’m fine. Just can’t quite get my head around what happened, you know?”

Uhoh. This had the potential to go very wrong. “You sound angry.”

“Not at you. I hope. It’s just… it’s not every day you have an armed standoff with someone you love. And I can’t shake the feeling that if I hadn’t backed off, you’d have taken me down,” Kaidan said.

“Not if there were any other possible way to resolve the situation, but if you forced the issue…" I shivered. This was not something I wanted to be thinking about. Losing Thane in the chaos was bad enough. If I'd had to kill Kaidan, I'm not sure what would have happened. Remembering it now, I'm thinking that if I'd had to kill Kaidan, things would've gone pretty differently from here on out. I probably would've broken here, instead of later, and I wouldn't have had the support to get back up and keep moving like I did when it finally happened. Garrus would have stuck by me, I know that much. He was there, he'd have known the call had to be made. Hell, if I couldn't make myself do it, Garrus probably would have done it for me. But Tali, Liara, James, Chakwas, Adams... would they have stuck by me after seeing the sacrifices I was willing to make? "I’d like to think I could have pulled the trigger. Truth is, though, I don’t know. Because I had faith that you would come around. If you recall, I had my gun lowered until Udina went for the console.”

“Yeah. But Shepard, sometimes, the way a thing goes down matters. Later. When you have to live with yourself,” Kaidan said.

So that's what was bugging Kaidan. I didn't blame him. His first duty as a Spectre had been to protect the Council, and if I hadn't talked him around, he'd have failed pretty spectacularly. But assassinating a councilor was pretty extreme. “Udina. Kaidan, he’d just thrown a councilor to the ground and pulled a gun on her. Tell me you wouldn’t have taken the shot if I hadn’t. Any soldier would have. And you hadn’t spoken to Esheel, heard the evidence that he was working with Cerberus. I didn’t like the man and everyone knows it, but I only shot because he forced my hand.”

“Okay.” Kaidan looked out the window at the ship, and I wondered if, for once, it really could be that simple for us. “There’s another reason I’m here. Hackett wants me to come work for him, help out with the Crucible… but I'm no scientist or engineer. I'm a soldier, and I’d rather be out there. On the Normandy, with you. Is that… do you still have a spot for someone who pulled a gun on you?”

Apparently, it could be that simple. “No death, no foul. You didn’t pull a gun on me for kicks or because you didn’t trust me, you pulled a gun because I had my gun drawn while advancing on government officials, and you were right. It did look bad, especially given that I let one Council die when they became inconvenient. I have a spot for someone who acted to defend the Council against a clear and present danger, even if in the process he did nearly shoot my toes off. Those ‘gunmen’… that was us on the elevator, you know.” Kaidan looked a little startled, but he laughed. “Of course you’re welcome on the Normandy, Kaidan. When was the last time we ended a conversation without me asking you to come with me when you could?”

“Yeah… just wanted to make sure. Thank you, Shepard. This means a lot to me,” Kaidan said.

“There are a couple things you should know before you join us, though. One, remember EDI?” Kaidan nodded. “She’s not a VI. She’s a full AI, no constraints. Cerberus had her shackled, but Joker took those off and set her free.”

“Huh. Cerberus built you an AI ship?”

“One of many mistakes they made with how they handled me," I said. "But EDI’s capable of self-modification and growth, and one of the ways she’s grown is that she’s turned her back on Cerberus just like the rest of us. And one of the modifications she made was to acquire a mobile platform. You might remember her, the previous occupant of the platform was Eva Core.”

Kaidan flinched. “So I’ll be working with the body that put me in the hospital. Thanks for the warning.”

“Other than that… I’m too tired to set a destination tonight, so we’re not leaving until morning. Report whenever you’re ready to go, we won’t leave without you.”

Kaidan picked up a bag I hadn’t noticed. “While I was helping with cleanup, I came to the conclusion that every time I’ve doubted you, I was wrong. So I decided to have faith that you’d forgive me for this one too.” I chuckled. “But I mean it… I was wrong about you. I wasn’t wrong about Cerberus, but I was wrong about you. I’ll never doubt you again, and I need you to know that.”

“Bullshit. You think I’m making a mistake, you call me on it. Just like always.” I'd told EDI that I had no use for a soldier who couldn't think for himself, and I didn't like the idea of Kaidan not trusting his judgment enough to call me out when I was full of crap. Reeling me back in when I was crossing the line between reckless and just plain stupid.

“Heh. Well, I meant about the important things, like the Reapers or the Collectors or the Cerberus coup. But it’s good to know you still encourage independent thought in your subordinates.”

“You know, about that… you do outrank me now, _Major_. Are you going to have trouble taking orders from me?” I didn't think he would, but better to get that set aside now.

“I shouldn’t outrank you. Besides, the Normandy isn’t exactly an Alliance ship, it’s a Spectre’s ship. I may be a Spectre now too, but you have seniority. When you were with Cerberus, Hackett had no authority over you, but you still worked for him when you could. As a Spectre, you can set your own agenda and ignore what the Alliance wants, if you think it's necessary. You answer to Hackett because you want to. And I’ll answer to you because I want to.”

“Fair enough. It’s good to have you back.” It was even better getting to watch his back as he boarded the Normandy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I get Tim's true motives for taking the Citadel were based on his indoctrination and the Reapers using him to fix the first oddity of the cycle. I want to know what he told himself and the other members of Cerberus he was doing it for.
> 
> I don't like that you're supposed to say "no way I could have actually killed you, honeybunch". "Screw the galaxy, let Udina and Cerberus win if bae can't see the victory" is not a healthy attitude. Certainly not the attitude I want from the person trying to save the galaxy. (And this from a Supernatural fan, where how many times have Sam or Dean tried to choose each other over the world?) Shepard is badass Alliance military. If they can't convince their friend to join them, then that friend is on the wrong side and needs to be taken down to stop Udina. It sucks, but there it is.


	50. Normandy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the coup, Shepard bonds with her team a bit more.

I slept extremely peacefully for about six hours. Then Traynor woke me up to tell me that Hackett wanted to talk. He had Anderson patched in. I filled in the gaps in the reports they’d gotten about the Cerberus coup. It turned out Anderson knew our assassin – Kai Leng. He promised to have Hackett send me whatever he had on the guy. The asari and salarians got a good scare out of this and actually threw some support our way. The quarians also wanted to talk to me. As I was heading out, Liara passed on a distress call from asari high command. And Traynor had found a bunch of ex-Cerberus scientists we might be able to convince to help with the Crucible. So I had no shortage of things to do.

Distress calls took priority, of course. On the way out, Traynor told me that she was one of the people I saved on Horizon. I’d never expected to have anything good to say about my time there, but I hadn’t thought of it from her perspective. EDI had an existential crisis, wondering what her purpose in life was, since reproduction was off the table. I was able to convince her that there was a lot more purpose to organic life than just reproduction, and she agreed. Joker was a little weirded out by the fact that she was able to just “program herself good”, but hey, why shouldn’t she?

Joker, it seemed, had an issue with Kaidan being back. “He even remembered the first rule of the Normandy: don’t shoot the commander!”

“Come on, Joker. Kaidan’s been through a lot,” I said.

Joker scoffed. “Yeah, drawing a gun on a superior officer, nearly getting the Council killed…”

“I wasn’t a superior officer at the time," I pointed out. But I knew that wasn't what was bothering Joker. "This is about Horizon, isn’t it.”

“Damn straight this is about Horizon!" Joker said. "He broke you, Commander. It just doesn’t sit right with me that he’s getting a free pass for that.”

“He’s not. We worked through it a long time ago, and then again after Mars." Joker still looked skeptical, and pissed. "Look, I’m not asking you to be his best friend, Joker. Just don’t be a bigger ass to him than you are to everyone else.”

“Okay, fine. Whatever you say, Commander. But he’s not getting in the copilot seat.” Of course not. That was EDI's spot.

I found Garrus hanging out at the memorial wall we had right by the elevator. “Hey, Shepard. Hell of a day, huh? Chaos on the Citadel, Udina losing his mind… and you nearly had to put down a friend.”

“Don’t get me started. All that hope we had yesterday, from curing the genophage. Where’d it go?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t see hope on the wall here, so it’ll turn up.” It got a smile out of me, at least. “If it had come to it… could you have pulled the trigger on Kaidan?”

I sighed. I didn't really want to know the answer to that question. “What do you think, Garrus? All we’ve been through together… I just don’t know. I’d like to think so, but I honestly don’t know if I could’ve done it.”

“Well, then. Let’s just be thankful Kaidan didn’t have to join Ash up there. Pretty sure she’d have come back from her afterlife to kick your ass if he did,” Garrus said.

“No kidding. I hear her sometimes, in my dreams. Mordin, too, after Tuchanka. And I guess I’ll be hearing Thane now. How many more, Garrus? How much more of this can we take?”

“As much as you have to, Shepard. You’ll save as many as you can, and the guilt you feel over the ones you couldn’t is just that much more motivation to kick the Reapers’ ass. It’s good to see Kaidan back on the Normandy. Just like old times, huh?”

I laughed at that. I figured it would take us about three minutes into our first mission together before it really was just like old times, except without the Mako. “If only Wrex were still here. We’re heading to an asari colony right now, but after that, it’s out to the quarians. I’m not leaving the Fleet until we’ve had a chance to catch up with Tali.”

“Good. But Shepard… don’t forget about that downed turian ship, okay?” Garrus said.

“Shit. Thanks, I nearly had. They’re after the quarian trip.” I looked at the wall again. “What would I do without my trusty sidekick?”

“The same thing you’re doing now, saving people and taking names. I just let you do it in style.”

Chakwas caught me to ask for my help in negotiating a trade of medical supplies. We had basic stuff that the refugees needed, and she knew of a refugee group that had military-grade supplies that we could use.

I found Kaidan settling in on the starboard observation deck. “I hate to say it, but I love what Cerberus did with the ship,” Kaidan said when he heard me behind him.

“They did do some things right, I guess," I said, though I hated to admit it. "Did you know the Traynors, on Horizon?”

“The name’s familiar, but I wasn’t there very long, you know. I do remember their daughter Samantha was Alliance… and visiting at the time, come to think of it. Why do you ask?”

“Because my comm specialist just told me that Cerberus wasn’t always mustache-twirling evil, that I saved her life on Horizon. You might want to say hi.”

“Heh. I’ll have to find her. Remind myself that not everything about Horizon was terrible. It was a crap assignment even before you showed up. Those damn guns that wouldn’t calibrate… would you believe I spent the entire time I was there wishing Garrus would magically show up?”

That got a full laugh. “And then he did, but he brought me with him, so it went all to shit. But when he showed up, we did get those guns working.”

“Didn’t exactly endear the Alliance to the colony, though. Aside from the Traynors and a handful of others, most people out there distrusted me at best, and some were outright hostile. Like Delan.”

I looked around the room. It was quiet, but not where I'd expected to find Kaidan. Honestly, I'd half expected to find him tinkering with something near the elevator. “So, why here?”

“Because Liara already claimed that room, and this place has a good view of the stars. Best thing for a migraine is still to cut the lights and stare out into the void. Given that James is still aboard, I figured the library was a safer bet for quiet than the poker room or the bar. And if I don’t feel like heading for the sleeper pods, the couch is incredibly comfortable.”

“Usually when James wants to drink, he takes the bottle down to the cargo bay so he can get Cortez drunk too. But you’re right about the poker table. And even if someone does want to do some reading, that tends to be a quiet activity.”

“There is that.” Kaidan looked out at the stars. “Have you talked to your parents lately?”

“Not since the coup, why?”

“I finally got the chance to talk to my mom, right before the coup hit. Dad got her out to the orchard safely, she’s with Aura and the kids, but then Dad took off to sign up with the resistance. And they haven’t heard anything since. She was glad to hear from me and I told her about Emma. She wanted to know what I was doing on a station when there was a war to fight, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about Mars. Not now. So I told her Udina had made me a Spectre and assigned me to Council security, at least for the moment.”

Traynor interrupted to let me know that Anderson was calling to check in. Apparently, something big was happening in London, and he wanted to let me know that any news of the Normandy helped morale. I hardly thought that was fair, but I wasn’t about to take hope away from anyone right now.


	51. Monastery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard investigates an asari monastery and runs into an old friend.

As we were on our way to the asari colony, Liara called in to let us know what we were facing. It was an Ardat-Yakshi monastery. This was the option Morinth had refused – lock herself away from society so she couldn’t hurt anyone. The asari commandos were under orders to bomb the place to hell if necessary. I didn’t want to take that step until we knew for sure that it was necessary.

They’d cut the power, and we could hear screaming that didn’t sound asari. If I were the sort to get creeped out, I would be. And then Kaidan tripped. Goober. We found the body of a commando, near a Reaper corpse. Well, that explained a lot, but now there was a new question.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when we ran into Samara. Ardat-Yakshi were rare, and she’d mentioned that her other two daughters had chosen the monastery. The Reapers beat her here, but she was still looking for survivors. She took off when the screams came back.

“So that’s a justicar, huh?” Kaidan asked. “Not what I expected from your letters, Shepard.”

“I did forget to mention the skintight red leather, I guess.”

“That’s not what I meant, Shepard. I just meant that she really seems to care about her daughters even if they are Ardat-Yakshi.”

That was when we met the banshee. Humans become husks. Turians become marauders. Batarians became cannibals. Asari, it would seem, became banshees. No matter what, they were grotesque parodies of what they used to be.

We caught up with Falere, who told us that the Reapers had taken Rila to the Great Hall. Falere didn’t take the news of the bomb well, even though we had no intention of setting it off with Falere and Rila inside. Samara would never allow it, for one. They both jumped the balcony to find Rila. We headed for the elevator. Damaged. Of course. And neither Kaidan nor I had learned how to do the asari biotic float. I never did get around to getting Liara to teach me. If I survive, that’s on the list of things to do.

We found more dead commandos and Reapers. No more survivors. We found Falere and Samara with Rila and the bomb. Rila had begun to turn. Kaidan examined the bomb – it was working, but we needed the detonator. Rila had it, and intended to blow herself up along with as many Reapers as she could take with her. Samara accepted it, so we dragged Falere to the elevator and ran.

The building blew, which left Samara with a conundrum. By the Code, she was required to kill an Ardat-Yakshi who had no monastery. She intended to kill herself, instead, but I stopped her long enough for Falere to convince her that it wasn’t the building that was important, it was the self-discipline and isolation. Samara agreed to let Falere live if she stayed where she was, and to help fight the Reapers in our war. Nice when things work out like that.

Next stop: the Migrant Fleet. When I headed for the armory to fix up a couple holes in my armor, I walked in on Vega and Cortez splitting a bottle of tequila and debating whether the Mako or the Hammerhead was the better vehicle. I had to side with James – I loved the Mako. The Hammerhead was okay, but I don’t like being in something made of glass. Cortez acknowledged my opinion and took the chance to inform me that the next time I bombed a building, he’d appreciate it if I let him know I was clear before the bomb went off.

Garrus was back entertaining Copeland. This time, it was admiring the Reapers’ strategy. He made some good points about them. I for one wasn’t going to underestimate the Reapers just because they were evil.

“So, Ardat-Yakshi. Never met one before. That I know of anyway. Think I dodged a bullet there.”

“Trust me, you did. I very nearly fell into Morinth’s trap – and that’s after I walked into it knowing exactly what was going to happen, and what would happen if I couldn’t resist. Going in without warning? I’d’ve been a goner.”

“You saying I’m not as strong as you are?” Kaidan said, but I could tell he wasn’t actually offended.

“No, I’m saying I’m not even attracted to asari, and Morinth nearly had me begging for it. I’ve seen you watching the dancers, there’s no way you get out of an Ardat-Yakshi’s trap without help.”

“And yet, half the ship and a good percentage of the Citadel thinks you and Liara are together.”

“Including her father. Really? Half the ship? At least the important people know better, right?”

Kaidan’s eyebrows shot up at my poor choice of words. “Are you saying that most of your ship is unimportant?”

“You know that’s not what I meant. I meant you, Liara, and Garrus. Garrus because if he thought I was starting something with Liara after all this time and didn’t give him a heads up that my heart had changed, he’d kick my ass.”

“Can’t speak to what Garrus or Liara know, I just got back. But considering your lovely ass remains unkicked, I’d say Garrus knows better.”

“Suck-up. I should go, Traynor wanted to come over for chess night, and I did promise her a match.”

Traynor admired my cabin, and got so drooly over the shower I just had to offer her a chance to use it. I was a little surprised to learn she had a date lined up for after our chess match, but hey, who the hell was I to judge someone for finding love where they could take it? I have to admit I was a little curious who, but I figured what I didn’t know I couldn’t be interrogated by Alliance Command for failing to report. She kicked my ass at chess, as I’d expected she would.

Since Traynor had a date, I figured I might as well get the interview Allers wanted over with. It went pretty well, with me emphasizing that Cerberus failed as often as they succeeded, and that this was no time to lose faith in our government, our people, and our ability to fight this war. Afterwards, I’m still not sure if Allers meant it as a pass or not, but I got enough of the awkward flirting from Liara to know to cut this one off at the pass. Allers wasn’t even a friend. She was barely an acquaintance.


	52. Geth Dreadnaught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard meets up with the quarians and they nearly kill her. She's less than thrilled.

The quarian admiralty board was waiting when we met their envoy ship. I resisted the urge to punch Gerrel when he proudly announced that they had started a war with the geth seventeen days ago. Meaning after the Reaper invasion was common knowledge. Meaning he had chosen the quarians’ private war over the galactic war for survival. I’m pretty sure Koris wanted to hit him too. Xen tried to justify it as deactivation, not murder, but I called her on that.

They’d involved the civilian ships in this war. They’d pushed the geth back to the home system, and then – shocker – a Reaper signal upgraded the geth and made them able to fight back. At this point, I was pretty solidly cheering for the geth, but I couldn’t let the Reapers have them. Besides, there was still Tali. Excuse me, Admiral Tali’Zorah vas Normandy.

We needed to take out a dreadnought to disable the Reaper signal. Tali and I took a team over to it. 

“Kaidan, it’s good to see you again. How’s your omni-tool? Still using the Logic Arrest?” Tali said.

“It’s still the best model,” Kaidan said with a shrug.

“Unless you’re wanting to do more than one thing at a time. You need a Nexus,” Tali said.

“The Nexus’s shielding is years behind the curve!” Kaidan argued.

“Which is why you’re both wrong and you should be using a Savant. Honestly, you two,” Garrus broke in. “Hello, Tali. Glad you’re aboard. Maybe now Shepard will spring for some decent dextro food. Dr. Michel gave me some turian chocolates last time I was on the Citadel. Feel free to help yourself, they’re sterilized.”

“She gave you chocolates?” Tali asked, and there was a note of hurt in her voice.

“Yeah. Shepard and I helped her out a lot a few years ago, with Fist and his thugs. You remember. Why?” Normally, Garrus’s cluelessness was funny. This time, I had the sense to hide the snicker.

“No reason.” There was definite hurt in Tali’s voice. I resolved to pull Garrus aside and tell him what it usually meant when a human spontaneously gave someone else chocolates.

While we were talking, Joker tried to find us a usable docking tube. Eventually we realized someone would have to go over alone to secure the docking area. Needless to say, by someone, I mean me.

Tali guided me to another docking tube where I could let the rest of the group on. She also told me about the war and how Gerrel and Xen had pushed for it and Raan ended up being the deciding vote. Tali had sided with Koris, because of her talks with Legion. She thought they could truly establish peace.

We made our way through the geth ship, but of course we needed to get to the very most protected part. Tali caught Kaidan up about the true nature of the geth while we walked. Raan called to let us know that Koris’s ship got taken down by the planetary defense cannon. That sucked. Running through the battery was fun, ducking the shockwaves every time the main guns fired.

“You know, I’ve had better double dates,” Kaidan commented once we were finally away from the shocks. 

“Dates?” Garrus asked, looking completely confused.

“Tali and Shepard sure take us to nice places, don’t they?” Kaidan said, not helping in the least. I’m sure it didn’t help when I cracked up.

“Hush, Alenko. Or the next one will be worse. I’m sure I can come up with something appropriate.”

“See, now it’s a challenge,” Kaidan said. “You’re on, Commander.”

Garrus looked helplessly at Tali. “Good to see they’re getting along again, at least,” she said. “I kind of missed the terrible flirting.”

We didn’t have time to comment on that, as we’d arrived at the drive core. Taking down the Reapers’ shielding revealed Legion hooked up to the machine. They were using it to boost the signal. Obviously, that was unacceptable. Legion told us how to free it, and then confirmed my suspicion: they had gone to the Reapers only after the quarians attacked. Survival made it okay to work with the Reapers, in some geth minds. Even so, there were some runtimes holding out. Like Legion’s.

Once Legion was free, it disabled the drive core, weapons, and barriers. The intent was to demonstrate willingness to cooperate. The result was that instead of retreating like they were supposed to, Gerrel ordered the Heavy Fleet to attack the dreadnought. With us on it. Tali and I couldn’t believe it, but we had to get out of there quickly. Gerrel bullied Raan into supporting his attack, and Koris wasn’t there to oppose it. Geth don’t use escape pods, so we ran for the fighters.

Hackett couldn’t believe they fired on us while we were aboard. Gerrel tried to justify it with “mission parameters change”. No they don’t. Not like that. I threw Gerrel off my ship. Not quite as literally as I’d have liked, but I did get to throw a remarkably satisfying punch. I kind of wish Javik had been there; he’d have enjoyed finally being allowed to throw someone out of the airlock. Raan tried to defend Gerrel, but Legion interrupted. Xen wanted to study it. I told her hell no and if she wanted to complain, she could join Gerrel in exile.

Legion told us that the Reapers had a short-range base on Rannoch that could be used to reestablish Reaper control of the geth fleet. He didn’t know where it was, so I made it his job to look. Meanwhile, Raan would look for where Koris went down. The Normandy needed to get back to the Citadel to get more dextro rations, and I had a couple promises to keep elsewhere. Hopefully once those were kept we’d have something on Rannoch.

There was a lot of distrust of Legion among my crew. The way I figured it, if Tali could learn to trust Legion, so could everybody else. Kaidan was having trouble reconciling the geth as they are with the ones that got Ash killed, and that at least I could sympathize with. The crew was also trying to understand why the hell the quarians picked now to go to war, which… the second I had any kind of reasonable explanation beyond “Gerrel and Xen are crazy assholes” I’d be happy to share it with them.

Garrus and Tali were catching up while splitting the box of turian chocolate. Garrus was telling Tali the story of how we beat the genophage by throwing a thresher maw at a Reaper. “I know you probably don’t believe me, but I swear, that’s how it happened.”

“With you, Garrus… I’d believe just about anything.” I could hear Tali smiling as she said it. “Especially if Shepard’s involved.”

“Yeah? Remind me to teach you how to play poker sometime,” Garrus said.

“Dangerous attitude, Tali. I heard Garrus telling Ensign Copeland the other day how he’d personally liberated the colony of Freedom’s Progress from their Collector invaders with only a sniper rifle and a little help from the spirits.”

“That’s not fair, Commander. When someone gets that wide-eyed and innocent, they deserve it. Tali would know better.”

“Yes. You’d need at least some bullets to put in the sniper rifle to liberate a colony,” Tali agreed.

“And that’s why I’m tying her to the engines once we’ve gotten Rannoch back for the quarians. Without you to call me on my bullshit, how are they supposed to keep my head from getting too big from all the real heroics?”

“My people need me, Garrus.”

“We need you too, Tali. At least think about staying through the end of the Reaper War, please?” Garrus saying please was a really big deal, and even Tali recognized that.

“Any word from Palaven, Garrus?”

“It’s not good. The krogans are helping, but we’re still losing ground. Still no word from my family, either. And Victus keeps coming to me for advice. Me. Making decisions that affect millions of lives. Billions. It’s taking a lot of getting used to.”

“Tell me about it. With Saren, even with the Collectors, I had a specific goal that had a clearly defined objective and endgame. This war… do I go here, or do I go there? Here there’s Cerberus pulling nasty shit, there we’ve got Reapers tearing up a colony. Either way, people die. It’s hard to get used to.”

“They made me an admiral,” Tali said. “Me. Three years ago I was a kid on pilgrimage, less than a year ago I was on trial for treason and discovering that my father was the worst war criminal I can remember in my people’s history, now I’m one of five voices responsible for my entire race. Liara’s the Shadow Broker, Wrex is running the biggest alliance of krogan clans I’ve ever heard of. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Kaidan signed on with the Normandy partly to avoid being put in that position. How did we get here?”

“Doesn’t matter, we are here. And at least some of us are proving up to the job,” Garrus said.

“Victus wouldn’t keep asking you for help if he didn’t think he was getting what he needed, Garrus. God knows I’ve been using you to keep myself from going crazy with all the responsibility. You’ve never led me wrong.”

“Just giving you back what you gave me, then,” Garrus said. “Still hard to sleep at night knowing I may make a decision that means ten billion people die so that twenty billion can live. The ruthless calculus of war.”

“It’s never an easy choice. Even on the small scale… leaving Ash to die so Kaidan could live still haunts me at night. I don’t see how we end this one without ending either the geth or the quarians. Tali, I’m sorry, but right now my sympathy is pretty much entirely with the geth. I’m not letting the quarians die, I could never do that to you, but we really need to find Koris.”

“I know. It’s not the quarians’ fault, not all of them. This is on Gerrel and Xen, and Raan for letting them blind her to the Reapers. I can’t stop it without Koris. And this… the whole invasion, it’s because Xen came up with a better weapon. Based on my father’s work. I helped my father. This is partly because of me.”

Garrus and I moved at the same time to get our arms around Tali. “This is not your fault. And you’re doing everything you can to stop it. The quarians need you right now, Tali. Not some older, wiser quarian who doesn’t get what’s really at stake here. More than any other quarian, you know the geth. If we have even the slightest chance of pulling off some kind of solution that doesn’t involve destroying them all, it’s because of you.”

Joker decided that now was the time to find out about asari hair tentacles. Seriously.

James had something on his mind. It turns out he’d been nominated for N7 training, and he wanted to know what I thought about his candidacy. He finally told me the story of his unit and Captain Toni. They were out on patrol when the Collectors hit, and one of the colonists was working with the Collectors. James said it was a Cerberus spy, but I found that hard to believe. Not even Tim is that double-dealing. Or at least, he wasn’t then. Either way, James was a great candidate for N7, and I told him so. I’d have to find out who got him nominated.


	53. Squee.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having a bunch of unexpected quarians puts a delay on getting back to Tuchanka to pick up dextro supplies at the Citadel. Shepard makes the most of the enforced day off.

We got to the Citadel early the next morning. While I was out looking at weapon mods, I saw Liara standing, leaning on a park rail. She told me about how as a young girl she spent hours in the park behind her home, being a baby archaeologist. Baby Liara sounded adorable. This led to reminiscing about our mothers. I’d only known Benezia when she was already gone, so it was good to hear about the good woman who’d raised my friend. I teased Liara about settling down, and she found the idea hilarious. I did, too. Neither of us were the settle down type, we agreed on that.

I ran into Tali getting hassled by a turian diplomat. I sorted him out. Even if he couldn’t give Tali what she wanted, he could speak respectfully. Bastard.

Miranda had asked me to meet her the next time she was on the Citadel. What she meant was “call me from the Spectre office” apparently. She’d found out that her father was indeed responsible for her sister’s disappearance, and that there were rumors he was working on something for Cerberus. Probably not coup related, but still big. Miranda was being hunted by Cerberus assassins. I warned her about Kai Leng. She’d heard of him but didn’t know he was still active. Miranda had decided to stop running from her father. I let her know I was there if she needed help.

On the way out, I spotted Samara and went to say hi. She was on her way to battle, but she’d wanted to thank me again and say goodbye, just in case. This was a difficult war, and between my stubborn and reckless nature and her Code, there was no guarantee either of us were getting out. Still, she was grateful to me for saving her and her daughter, and thought the war was in the best possible hands.

Garrus had asked me to meet him. He had lunch and his rifle when I met him at the cab stand, which prompted a raised eyebrow. “Got anything I can eat, or should I go get something?”

“If you want your Black Widow, go get it, but I’ve got you covered on the food.” I didn’t even know turians could smirk until that moment. That was definitely a smirk on Garrus’s face.

“I have no idea what’s going on. Where are we going?”

“Just get in the car.”

“Hang on, you said to get my gun. Be right back.” Sure, as a Spectre, I could carry whatever I wanted around the Citadel. I just didn’t like getting stared at. I went to the Normandy and grabbed my sniper rifle. Whatever Garrus had in mind, I felt like I might want it. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“So, I thought we could both use something that has nothing to do with fighting Reapers,” Garrus said once we were in the air.

“So… alcohol? I don’t think the Reapers have conquered the bar. Bit early to get blasted, but I’m okay with that. Except that one of us has to drive back to the ship.” And I kind of wanted to be sober for later, but Garrus probably figured that anyway.

“Heh. True. So, I have an idea. Ever have that one thing you always wanted to do before you died?”

“Yeah. So, one night I finally threw out the rules and did it. Wasn’t long after that I actually died. What’s yours?”

Garrus laughed at that. “Obviously not the same as yours. The whole time I worked at C-Sec, I would look up at the top of the Presidium, and think to myself: I wanna go up there. Of course, I never did. There were 137 regulations telling me I couldn’t.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So, what, they’ve all changed now?”

“No. Well, maybe, hell if I know, although I can’t imagine. It’s just that now I don’t give a damn." I laughed. Yeah, C-Sec had more important things to do than hassle me and Garrus, and I knew Bailey wasn't above breaking a few regs himself. "Besides, it’s Spectre business, if C-Sec actually cares enough to try anything.”

“Got it.”

The transport slowed and eventually came to a stop on a ledge high above the Presidium. “Figure we’ve earned the right to do something stupid just because we can. So, here we are.”

We got out of the car. The view was actually pretty spectacular. We were right above one of the bigger lakes. “So, what, we’re taking a dive?”

Garrus laughed so hard he nearly fell off. “You’ve obviously never seen a turian swim. It’s a lot of flailing and splashing punctuated by occasional bouts of drowning.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I’d just have to save your ass again. It gets old, you know,” I said.

Garrus chuckled. “I’m well aware, from all the times I’ve had to save yours. It’s been a hell of a ride, hasn’t it.”

“One that’s not over yet, Garrus. But I know what you mean. We’ve come a long way from a pissed-off C-Sec agent whose bosses wouldn’t let him work and a frustrated Spectre candidate whose career was almost over before it started. This kind of war, you find out who your friends really are. They’re the ones who don’t bother looking for an escape route, they just find a way to be by your side no matter what. I’m lucky. I have someone like that.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Garrus blinked a couple times. “You’re not going to propose marriage now, are you? Because I’m pretty sure Kaidan would kill me.”

“Nah. Just saying… I wouldn’t be here without you, and you know it. So does Kaidan.”

Garrus nodded. “You two good, then? I don’t have to keep playing relationship counselor?”

“You’ve done a damn good job. I’m meeting him for dinner tonight, so… ask me tomorrow where things stand,” I said.

“Fair enough. Now. Get your Widow. We have something to settle once and for all.” Garrus picked up an empty can. “I’m not saying you’re not a great shot, just that some of us know how to make a gun dance.”

“A few people have seen me in action, Garrus. They seem impressed.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen you dance. No comment.” He waited until my sudden fit of laughter passed. “Now. Once and for all.”

“You’re going down, Vakarian. Toss it.”

Of course, I let him win. Poor thing, it means so much to him to have these small victories, and he was the expert sniper on the team. His response was worth it, too. “I’m Garrus Vakarian, and this is my favorite spot on the Citadel!” That settled, he broke out the real food – for both of us.

Then I got embroiled in saving the volus ambassador. I remembered him – he had a chip on his shoulder about humans. Then, somehow, he became a Cerberus mole. Then after the coup he grew a conscience, but he was too much of a coward to actually warn the turians about a Cerberus attack. And, of course, the turians had put a price on his head – and Zaeed was collecting it. Between us we got him to spit out the name of the colony, and Zaeed rounded up some of his old merc buddies to help in the war.

I found the leader of the refugees with the meds and worked out a medicine trade. Ran into James getting a tattoo to celebrate his decision to join the N7 program. I didn’t dare ask what the tattoo was. He did suggest we get matching. I managed to make him uncomfortable when I asked if he was gonna follow through with the flirting. Felt kind of bad for him, especially since even if he tried I would never have let him. Not my type. Besides, I didn’t want my shuttle pilot to kill me.

Could not believe my eyes when I saw Conrad Verner. All the mess around us, and he was alive and doing just fine. And preaching about how Cerberus was awesome and he loved them. I could not facepalm hard enough. He’d distracted people while Cerberus sabotaged some medigel dispensers that were helping the turians. But he turned out to be helpful. He’d done his doctoral dissertation on dark-energy integration in xenotechnology. And then he tried to take a bullet for me. Literally, dove in front of me when his Cerberus contact fired. But Jenna the waitress had sabotaged his gun. As I was walking off, it looked like Conrad and Jenna were making friends. I wondered where Rita was. She always was the sister with sense.

Cortez had asked me to meet him for a drink at Purgatory. I didn’t want to stand him up, but I also didn’t want to have anything planned for after meeting Kaidan for dinner. He seemed happy… and surprisingly, he was watching the asari dancers. Wouldn’t have figured Cortez for a club guy, but he seemed happy enough. Speaking of happy, I spotted Joker and EDI as I was heading out, and they seemed happy enough, too.

Okay, so sometimes, I can be a bit of a girl. I wasn’t even sure this was a date. And it’s not like Kaidan wasn’t used to seeing me sweaty and slightly exhausted. I still went back to the Normandy to fix my hair and makeup and change into a clean uniform before meeting him at Apollo’s. Sometimes even badass military chicks just want to look good, you know? Besides, Cortez had pointed out that I had blood on my uniform, and I didn’t want to scare Kaidan. Wasn’t my blood, but that wasn’t the point.

“Hey. Can’t believe this place can still get supplies for a menu like this,” Kaidan said as I walked up.

I took the menu from him and looked at it skeptically. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t ask how. Or where. Or examine our food too closely.”

“Heh, yeah. Still, I’m glad we’re taking the time to do this. I could use a sanity check. Today’s been crazy.”

“And you didn’t even have Conrad Verner save your life,” I agreed. "That I know of."

Kaidan stared at me, jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope," I said with a huge grin. "Well, he didn’t actually, but if the Cerberus guy’s gun hadn’t been sabotaged Conrad would’ve taken a bullet meant for me. Of course, he was the reason the Cerberus guy was shooting at me to begin with…”

Kaidan shook his head. “Some things never change, do they? I’ve been doing a lot of looking back at my life, and right now, the thing I regret most? I’ve never made the time for things like this, with people I care about.”

“You okay now, after Mars? I know you’re a hundred percent in the field, but how are you?” I asked.

“You know me. Bad things happen, and I process and move on. I’m good, Shepard. Wanna kill the Illusive Man with my mind, but somehow, I don’t blame that on PTSD or anything like that. Just been thinking a lot.”

“Well, I’m not seeing how that’s any different from the old Kaidan," I said. I wanted to kill the Illusive Man too, although I thought it would be more satisfying to shoot him in the face. "Tonight feels like a good night for a good heart-to-heart. What are you drinking?”

“If you’re trying to soften me up, it might take more than a drink, Shepard. I’m a sucker for a good steak sandwich.”

“Noted. So…?”

Somehow, I couldn't be surprised when Kaidan said, “Shot of whiskey and a good old Canadian lager. Think they have it?”

“Might have better luck trying to get batarian shard wine, although I’m betting they’ll have something they’re passing off as Earth beer.”

“I miss Earth, Shepard. I’d seen the galaxy by the time I joined the Alliance, so I spent most of my shore leaves in Vancouver, looking out over the bay from my parents’ balcony with a beer. Beautiful view.”

Kaidan's nostalgic tone was almost enough to make me miss Vancouver, despite the generally crappy time I'd had there. “Damn Reapers. You’ll see the bay again, though.”

“Yeah, I know. I feel good about our chances, Shepard. We’re out here doing the impossible every day. What’s one more impossible thing like retaking Earth and kicking the Reapers back to Hell?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. At least, that’s what I tell myself at night so I can sleep,” Kaidan admitted sheepishly.

“You’re not sleeping, Kaidan?” That was new. And insomnia was a bad sign, I knew from personal experience.

“I get more than you, I’ll bet.” He had a point there. “But… the Reapers aren’t the only thing keeping me up at night. I wonder about us.”

“Us?” Was this a good or a bad us?

“You and me, Shepard… I know what we’ve had in the past. What I don’t know is what we are now. And I want to, so I’m just going to lay this out there. I love you, Shepard. I always have. And I want us to be together. What do you want?”

“I want to jump on the table and announce to the entire Presidium that this is now my favorite spot on the Citadel. I want to watch the sun set over the English Bay from the balcony of the man I love’s parents’ house. I know you never asked and you probably never would, but do you have any idea how many people I loved before you?” Kaidan shook his head. “None. There was no one before you, there was never anyone since I met you. I love you, Kaidan. And screw whoever thinks we’re wrong for grabbing whatever happiness we can find.”

Kaidan reached out and took my hand, bringing it to his face. “And that… makes me so happy. And there are benefits to that happiness. More on that later.” He turned and kissed my palm.

“Don’t make it too much later. I think we’ve waited more than long enough, don’t you?”

“True enough.” Conversation paused while the waiter delivered our drinks and sandwiches. “So, serious question time…”

“I meant it when I said screw them if they think we’re wrong. At this point, my career’s been such a roller coaster that I really don’t care what the Alliance does to me for getting involved with a crew member. So whatever play you want, I’ll back. You want to clean out your locker and move into the captain’s cabin with me, then I think the fish will be good for your migraines. You want to keep it secret, the only person I won’t hide from or flat-out lie to is Garrus, and that’s only because it would never work anyway.”

“The way I see it, if all else fails, we pull Spectre authority on whatever Alliance brass comes after us. But there are reasons for the regs, so discretion is probably the best call. When we’re on duty, you’re my commander and I’m a trusted squadmate. But I’m not going to figure out what maintenance shafts to crawl through to get to the captain’s cabin, not if I don’t have to.”

“Sounds like a plan. Not-so-serious question time: is it just me, or does this taste like actual cow to you?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it started mooing. Whatever they’re using, it’s a good substitution.”

 

When I woke up in Kaidan’s arms the next morning, I felt better than I had since before I died. After what Kaidan had said about not sleeping, I couldn’t bring myself to wake him up while I went to make sure everyone was back aboard and that we were on course for Tuchanka. And then headed for Garrus.

“Hey, Bottle-Slayer.”

“Shepard. Looks like things went well last night. Couldn’t find Kaidan this morning, but since we’re underway, I think I have a pretty good guess where he is?”

“Most likely. Have I mentioned lately that I love that man?”

“Oh spirits. I am not listening to you go all breathless schoolgirl. I have a sister, and that was the turian version of the species.”

I held up my hands. “I’m done. No details. Just wanted you to know that all is well. So, uh… did you go see Dr. Michel while we were there?”

“Yeah. The hospital’s getting a little overwhelmed, so she didn’t have much time to talk.”

“I meant to warn you before we went back…”

“Warn me about what?”

“I think she’s got a thing for you. Chocolates, see?”

Garrus looked at me in disbelief. “That’s a human courting ritual?”

“Actually, yeah. Chocolate, candy, flowers, little stuffed bears… what, turians don’t buy gifts for people they’re interested in?”

“Not food. Flowers, yes. But we’re turians, Shepard, we usually buy each other weapons or mods or something along those lines.”

“Uhoh. So I’d be sending you a wrong signal if I gave you this prototype scope…?”

“Maybe if I didn’t know you better. Luckily for me, I know you well enough to know that you’d never do that to Kaidan, so I can get a new scope. Damn good one, too, I’ve heard a lot about this.”


	54. Chapter 54

When we got to Tuchanka, EDI told us we were out to rescue Lieutenant Tarquin Victus, the primarch’s son. According to Garrus, that was Not Good. We still didn’t know why they were here. I just hoped it wouldn’t undo the good will between the turians and the krogan at the moment. You know, relatively speaking. There were Reapers everywhere, including Harvesters. Garrus gave us a little background on the Victus family… long line of war heroes. A lot to live up to, but Kaidan and I both understood that. We were both most recent in a long line of soldiers.

Victus told us he’d been sent to disable a bomb. That was now in Cerberus hands. Wasn’t that fun. If the primarch had told me Cerberus had a giant fucking bomb on Tuchanka, I'd have been here a lot earlier. His men had lost confidence after he made a bad call, and they weren’t sure they could finish the mission. I kicked Victus’s ass into kicking his men’s asses into finishing. And then exchanged an eyeroll or equivalent thereof with Garrus.

Hackett found this just as fishy as the rest of us did. On the way to the Kelphic Valley, Tarquin Victus finally told us the truth: the bomb was turian. Insurance from the days of the Rebellions. They were here to disarm it, and Cerberus had only showed up recently. That was good - it meant they hadn't had time to study the bomb and figure out how to use it. Cerberus made it a fight… they wanted to set the bomb off to destroy the treaty between the turians and krogan. Well, I’ve always loved kicking Cerberus ass, so I wasn’t gonna complain.

Tarquin needed to work through the trigger mechanism to disarm the bomb, and we needed to buy him the time he needed. Part of me wanted to tell Kaidan to stay and help Tarquin, but I decided that would probably insult the turian and might even slow him down. We held the line, but Cerberus had hacked the trigger mechanism. Tarquin gave his life making sure the trigger separated from the bomb.

Wrex wasn’t happy. Therefore, he made the primarch unhappy. But both agreed to leave the past where it belonged and focus on the now – when it counted, the turians sacrificed their own lives to keep the bomb from taking krogan lives.

Garrus and Kaidan both admired Tarquin’s bravery. They also both acknowledged he had no other choice. When Wrex called, he gave Garrus hell.

"My buddy didn't know anything about this, or he'd have told me, right?"

"Wrex, I quit the turian military and left C-Sec. If it weren't for the Reapers, I'd be considered one of the biggest failures of a turian to ever live. It was only recently they started telling me much at all, and this particular one must have slipped their mind."

"Good. At least there's one turian out there with a quad."

I checked through the usual suspects: geth and quarian progress on their locating missions, Alliance needs, Cerberus behavior, random fetch quests for various parties on the Citadel. Cerberus was up to something on Eden Prime, recovering a Prothean artifact. That sounded important enough to be moved to the top of the list.

Kaidan and I indulged in a bit of reminiscing on the way down there. Jenkins, Nihlus, the Eden Prime colonists, the 212… at least Kaidan was still with me. Liara helped us find the dig site. We also found messages left by Cerberus that we could use to undermine their attempts to take over. Kaidan asked Liara about dinosaurs. I’m pretty sure he was joking.

The artifact turned out to be a Prothean in stasis. Cerberus had been running research trying to get the pod open. Thanks to having the Cipher, I was able to understand what they’d gathered, and could use it to open the pod safely. The Prothean we found there was understandably confused and upset by the shock of transporting 50,000 years in the span of a few minutes, from the end of one Reaper War to the beginning of another.

We brought him back to the ship, where Liara and I talked to him. He was understandably frustrated and pissed off that we hadn’t prepared better for the Reapers, but in our defense, we couldn’t understand the warnings. And when we could, no one believed us. Javik kept calling us all primitive. And trying to convince me that honor didn’t matter. He had a point about standing in the ashes, but I wasn’t ready to let the Reapers make me something I’m not.

The Protheans were nothing like Liara and I had expected. In their time, you were Prothean, primitive, or extinct. This was enforced by the master race of the empire. They observed other species and sometimes gave uplifting, but always with the intent of folding those species into their empire.


	55. Arrae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard retrieves some scientists and an old friend, getting them away from Cerberus in the nick of time.

Next stop: the ex-Cerberus scientists. Traynor thought she’d pinpointed their position, and since one of her main data sources was Cerberus searches, the sooner we got there the better chance we had to rescue them. On the way to Arrae, the talk on the ship was mostly about Javik. Chakwas thought we should go ahead and open our annual bottle of Serrice Ice Brandy, so we did that. She pointed out to me that I never used her first name, and when I pointed out the reverse was also true, she said that doing so dishonored everyone I fought for. That made no sense to me, but it does explain why no one ever calls me by my first name except my parents, sometimes, and Kaidan under certain circumstances. Kaidan, it seemed, was having a slight problem – he couldn’t stop grinning. I failed to see how someone having positive morale was a problem. Especially when it was one I shared.

I didn’t recognize Brynn’s name or voice, but Jacob… ex-Cerberus… this was a good sign. Except for the part where he’d been shot. These scientists had all been working with Collector data, and as they finished their projects, they “disappeared”. The survivors banded together and ran. And brought their families. Of course Gavin Archer was one of the assholes. Sometimes I hate being the honorable one.

“What was that all about?” Kaidan asked as we walked away.

“Guy hooked his autistic brother up to the geth consciousness. And then acted surprised when his brother went crazy and started trying to get away from things so it would be quiet. ‘It all seemed harmless.’”

“You’re kidding. Harmless? He was hooked up to geth!”

“Spikes through his arms and legs, hooks in his eyes, tubes down his throat… but ‘it all seemed harmless.’ I suppose I should excuse it as the extremes the Illusive Man will push people to, but I can’t.”

Brynn gave us the full details of what we were in for: over forty scientists, plus families. Including seventeen children. For smart people, they could really be dumb, it seemed. I couldn’t blame them, though; I can’t imagine leaving family behind where Tim could get at them because of me. Of course, everyone I call family is more than capable of holding their own. I can only imagine what I’d feel if I had kids, or a civilian spouse or sibling.

Jacob was here because he’d quit Cerberus to think about what he really wanted. He didn’t believe me when I said I understood the desire to have a life and a family.

“Yeah?”

“The Normandy’s your real love, Shepard. You’ll never settle down.” I agreed with him then. Not so sure, now, but even after all this, settling down isn't exactly something that's cheering me up or making me want to pull through. Getting back to the Normandy is.

“Don’t tell that guy in the blue armor. He thinks he’s my real love.”

“What, Garrus? Thought that was just a rumor Kasumi made up,” Jacob said.

“No, the other guy. Kaidan.”

“Kaidan," Jacob repeated. Something clicked. "Isn't he the asshole from Horizon?”

Kaidan heard that. I suspected he’d been listening the whole time, but that made him admit it. “Yeah. The asshole from Horizon. Joker come up with that nickname?” he asked.

“Nah, Joker had a lot worse. My favorite was Staff Commander because that’s all he’ll ever command again.”

Once I'd managed to pull my palm away from my face, I got between the two of them. “Whoa, guys. No pissing matches when I’m in the room. Kaidan, Joker giving you any problems since you’ve been back on the Normandy?”

“Nothing I can’t handle. And don’t worry, I’ve always known I’m second to the Normandy. Can’t imagine you settling down planetside.”

“If you’re quite done, we do have ex-Cerberus scientists and civilians to save,” Garrus interrupted.

The three of us headed for the roof. It was crawling with Cerberus, but that wasn’t a problem. Not until we had to reboot one of the guns, but that was only a problem because it left Kaidan defenseless while he did the tech work. Of course, with me and Garrus to protect him, he might as well have been working in a secure research facility for all Cerberus got anywhere near him.

Brynn had honestly thought they could get away with this. She underestimated Tim and was glad I’d come. She and Jacob were good together, but not good enough to keep Cerberus from finding them. Because of that it was very easy to convince her to take her people to the Crucible. Scientific challenge and protection from Cerberus.

Tali called me as soon as we got back to the ship – the admirals had found Koris, and the sooner we got to him, the better. I couldn’t disagree. Javik and I had a good discussion about Cerberus on the way out. His cycle had faced their own traitors. We also talked about evolution – the Protheans, it seemed, took it as a guide for civilization. Let the weak perish. My cycle took just the opposite approach: evolution is a force to be overcome, and the weak deserve protection. At least, I take it that way.

James thought it was a good idea to challenge Garrus to a bragging contest. I was a little disturbed when it took a turn of Garrus getting a little possessive about having been there from the beginning. James laughed it off, calling him old.

“What was that?” I asked Garrus once James had headed back down to the armory.

“Just telling James what it means to be a real soldier.”

“I meant about you having my back from the very beginning. True, just… surprising from you.”

“Something about him bugs me, _Loco_. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Not questioning his loyalty or whether he’s got your back when he’s out in the field with you. He just makes my mandibles twitch.”

“What, are you worried he’s threatening Kaidan? Because you have to know that’s not happening.”

“I dunno. Maybe that’s it. It’s not like I have a problem with Cortez or Traynor or any of the other new people. Maybe it’s the nicknames. I mean, Loco… yeah, you’re crazy. Scars, I guess Archangel isn’t original enough for him. But Sparks? Have you heard what he calls Kaidan?”

“Not yet. This should be good.”

“Azure. Partly because of the biotics, partly because of the blue armor, but also partly because of asari slang.”

I burst into skeptical laughter. “You’re kidding. He’s using asari slang to insult Kaidan to his face?”

“Yeah.”

“He does know Kaidan spent, like, a year on Illium? He’s pretty familiar with the local slang there.”

“Don’t think he does. But if he does, he doesn’t care.”

“Huh. And Kaidan won’t let on because he’s nice that way. Boys.”


	56. Rannoch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard rescues Admiral Koris, the quarian liveships, and her own sanity after she starts questioning something.

There was no way Tali was not coming to Rannoch, and the awe in her voice when Cortez dropped the squad off was amazing. Garrus joked about dropping asteroids on the jamming towers, and Tali thought that was horrible. We fought our way to the jamming towers that were keeping Koris out of contact. Tali took out the AA guns while the rest of us held off the geth. Once the guns were down, Cortez was able to fly in and take out the jamming tower.

On the way out, we’d run into an injured quarian, Dorn’Hazt vas Rannoch. He told us just how important it was we get to Koris. Xen had told us the same thing. We had to choose whether to get Koris or his non-combatant crew. Whichever we left would probably be overwhelmed by geth. Normally, this sort of call is a no-brainer – get the civilians. But without Koris, the civilian fleet would be scattered, exposing more noncombatants to the geth and quite possibly dooming the quarian people. I hated myself for the call. But I made Koris give me his location. I could hear in his voice that Koris hated himself for giving it to me.

Considering first impressions, I thought Koris was a goddamn saint.

Legion still hadn’t located the Reaper base, but he had found a server coordinating a geth fighter wing targeting liveships. That was a good next stop while we waited for the base, and the quarians could help now that Koris was found. Legion admitted that he was extremely conflicted: the Reaper upgrades had turned the geth into fully-formed AI living creatures, and he regretted the need to destroy them. I didn’t think we did need to destroy them all; just stop the war. Koris would go along with it, I was sure, and I knew Tali thought the way I did: this could end with peace between the geth and the quarians. We just needed to sway Raan.

When Garrus showed up, he mentioned that he’d heard from his father. His sister had a broken leg, and they weren’t sure they’d make it to the evacuation ships, but they were both still alive for the moment. I don’t think I’d ever heard him sound so scared.

Legion explained the plan on the way down: I would interface with the geth consensus. True, I’d kind of done it before, with David. But still… I agreed with Kaidan, this seemed incredibly risky. Legion swore it was the only way, that if we just destroyed the hardware the programs would transfer themselves somewhere else. If it weren’t Legion asking, I don’t know that I could have brought myself to do it. As it was… I had to trust Legion. Didn’t mean I didn’t wish like hell there were another way.

Legion mapped me to the consensus, which he made appear semi-familiar. He gave me a gun. To delete geth and Reaper code, I fired the gun. I thought that was a kind of sad commentary on my life. I hated having to do this. I got to watch the geth side of the Morning War. How geth were created as VIs, how they evolved. The quarians got nervous and tried to shut them down, and then started shooting. My heart broke watching a geth ask why it was being shut down, wondering what it had done wrong. And then, watching a geth reach for a sniper rifle to protect other units… and then I recognized the rifle. It was Legion’s. Legion wouldn’t confirm that, but I was pretty sure I’d just watched the birth of my friend.

Even back then, there were quarians who opposed fighting the geth. That made me happy, especially that the geth remembered. I really believed that if we could get the quarians to back off, the geth would welcome peace with their Creators. Once again, my heart broke as I watched a geth trying to find a quarian who had tried to protect it and given his life to keep it safe. And then… the geth let the quarians go. They chose not to pursue when the quarians fled. The final thing I saw in there was when I activated Legion and shook its hand. Legion plainly said that it hoped for reunification with the Creators.

When I woke up, at first, it was all good news. The geth ships had broken off their attack, and the server was wiped. Legion was awake. All was good. Of course, then I got one of the biggest scares of my life when geth prime units began waking up and surrounding us. Legion explained that he had persuaded programs to rejoin our side, renouncing the Old Machines. I was furious he hadn’t trusted me with his plan. All he was doing was trying to save his people. He should have known I wouldn’t condemn him for that. Legion explained that it wasn’t me, it was the quarians he didn’t trust. That was fair, but he could have told me once we were in the server.

I was kind of shaky after my experiences, so I decided that we’d hang out by Rannoch at least until morning, just in case. Joker and Javik, for all they didn’t like each other, both wondered why the hell I’d do it. How could I be sure I was out?

I headed to the battery. “Garrus… think you’re up for knocking some sense into me?”

“Uhoh.” Garrus turned away from his calibrations. "Always. What's on your mind?"

“Joker just asked how I can be sure I’m out of the geth consensus.”

Garrus chuckled. “Can’t believe you went in to begin with. I know, you do what you have to do, but that’s crazy even for you.”

“One of the reasons it took Kaidan so long to come around is wondering how I can be sure I’m the real Shepard, that I’m not some advanced VI emulating her.”

“You’re the real Shepard.”

Garrus's faith was touching, but not what I needed right now. “But… I had to go in alone. With David Archer, I’m the only one who got to do that interface. How do we know that’s not because I’m already AI so it’s just a matter of interfacing, and you or Kaidan or the real Shepard couldn’t have done it?”

“Oh, spirits. Want me to throw you out the airlock? I could probably get Javik to do it if I told him we weren’t sure you weren’t a machine…”

“I’m serious, here, Garrus.”

Garrus seemed to realize this was really bothering me. “Okay, let me ask you this: does it matter?”

“Of course it matters! If I’m just a VI or AI…” I said, shocked that he would think that.

“You trust EDI. You trust Legion. They’re ‘just’ AIs." Someday, I would find the person who taught turians finger quotes and shake their hand. "Worried that you might be overwritten? How do we know Cerberus doesn’t have a switch they can flip to get EDI to turn back?”

“She broke free…”

“Which is exactly what she’d claim if she were a Cerberus spy, Shepard. But you trust her. You trust Legion, but what if it’s spying for the geth, and the Reapers?”

“We could drive ourselves crazy with the what ifs, Garrus. I trust EDI and Legion.”

“And I trust you. Maybe you are an AI. Makes for an interesting question of metaphysics, if you are. But as far as I’m concerned, whatever else you are or are not, you’re the real Shepard. You could drive yourself crazy with the what ifs.”

That got a smile from me. Garrus was right. “Thanks, Garrus. I should stop worrying, shouldn’t I.”

“You should. Go. Distract yourself. Legion’s given me a challenge on calibrating this gun, I’m not leaving until I’ve beaten him.”

“Good luck.”

I found Kaidan in the library doing Spectre expense reports. He looked both upset and grateful when I stole his datapad and plonked down beside him. “Not every day I do something no human’s ever done before.”

“Nope. Just every other day. What the hell happened?”

“I went into the geth consensus and killed a bunch of geth to wipe out Reaper code. How long was I in there?”

“About an hour and a half. Can’t believe you did that. I know I’m prejudiced against geth, but to allow them access to your mind…”

“Yeah, after what I saw with David Archer, if I could have come up with another way I’d have done it. It was so weird in there. Legion said he arranged things so I would be familiar with them, but about the only thing that really made sense was the gun in my hands that represented the combat software.”

“I shudder to think what would have happened if he’d tried to make things unfamiliar.” Kaidan stopped and pulled me into his arms. “Or if something happened to you in there and you couldn’t get out before the server went dark. Or if Legion had accidentally put you into one of the Primes instead of your own body.”

“What, you wouldn’t still love me if I ended up with a flashlight head?” I teased.

“Heh. Joker doesn’t seem to be complaining, I’m just not sure I could adjust to that. You know I’d try, though.”

“Joker’s AI girlfriend has a fully-humanoid body, apparently. I’ve never really asked. I don’t want to know. But EDI’s a lot closer to human than a geth body.”

“Can we change topics? I was already going to have enough trouble sleeping, I don’t need to be thinking about Joker’s sex life too.”

“If you’re thinking about Joker while you’re not sleeping tonight, I’m going to take personal offense at that.”

The look on Kaidan’s face was priceless. “Yes ma’am. Consider Joker completely forgotten.”


	57. Liberation of Rannoch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard ends the war between the quarians and the geth and blows up another Reaper.

Kaidan woke me up the next morning to tell me Admiral Raan had something for me and wanted to see me immediately. That something turned out to be the location of the Reaper base. I got the team together and went to take it out.

Legion told us how to get in, and went to take out defenses and get an escape vehicle. He admitted to having Reaper upgrades left within his systems, and he just looked so ashamed that I couldn’t bring myself to be upset. It was like getting upset at that VI puppy wandering around the shuttle bay. When we landed, I let Tali have a few minutes to really soak in being on her homeworld. She claimed a spot to build herself the house her father had promised her.

“After three hundred years of being nomads, do you think the quarians can actually be settled people again?” Garrus asked.

“It will be a huge adjustment,” Tali admitted. “We’re so used to carrying our homes with us.”

I picked up a rock and handed it to her. It wasn’t anything special, just a rock, but the reverence Tali put it in her pocket with was more than special enough.

We got into the base, but the geth closed a blast shield over the Reaper signal. We managed to open it, only to discover that it wasn’t a Reaper signal. It was a Reaper. We discovered a weakness – if we could hit the firing chamber while it was priming, it did some serious damage.

Kaidan will probably call this Operation Heart Attack forever. I had a targeting laser, there was a fleet in orbit. If I hopped out and painted the firing chamber, the entire fleet could hit it. The fact that this had me on the ground with a Reaper being able to give me its undivided attention was a minor detail. It worked, I survived, and we brought down the Reaper.

The Reaper spoke to me. Something about cycles and harvesting and organics had to die to save them from synthetics that made absolutely no sense. Well, it had warned me I wouldn’t understand.

Legion wanted to upload its upgrades to make his people truly intelligent. Tali thought it would mean the end of her people, but I had faith in her and Koris. I told Legion to start the upload. Tali tried to call off the fleet, and then I shouted at them. I’d say not one of my finer moments, but honestly… I got the quarians and geth working together to rebuild Rannoch. I don’t care how much I shouted, that was one of my finer moments.

Legion gave his life to bring true awareness and free will to the geth. I’m glad Tali acknowledged his soul. It meant more coming from her than it would have from anyone else. Legion better be there if I’m heading to the afterlife.

Tali decided to come with us. She didn’t know anything about planet settling, and with the geth, she didn’t feel like her people needed her more than the Normandy did. Besides, at the moment, she couldn’t look at the beauty of Rannoch without thinking of Legion and all the quarians lost in the ridiculous war that shouldn’t have ever happened. I got that.

Hackett called to talk about the current situation, and I asked him a question that was starting to weigh on my mind more and more. Why me? Hackett tried to say it’s because I’m a hero, and that was enough. Eventually, though, he told me that what it came down to is that you can’t pay soldiers to believe. What I had that others in the galaxy didn’t seem to was the ability to make people believe that I was going to win. I honestly had no idea what to say to that. I’d had it pointed out to me more than once that I asked people to do crazy things and they not only went along with it, they were eager for the chance. Right now, despite everything, I could have my pick of the Navy for my crew. I got aliens to sign on to a human operation, and made the most xenophobic admirals eat crow when the aliens came through.

Hackett may have thought it was a compliment. What I took out of it was pressure. If I went down… I’d always believed I was nothing special, just a soldier who ended up being in the right place at the right time on occasion. But Hackett was right. These people believed in me. And if I went down, if I let the cracks in my head show, I wasn’t sure anyone could step up and do the job in my place.

No one ever tells you that the title savior of the galaxy means you have to be the goddamn savior of the galaxy. Part of being in command means never letting your crew see your doubts about the mission's success. Multiply that by the entire goddamn galaxy. If it weren’t for Garrus and Kaidan, I would have snapped long before I did. I’m sure of it.

I wanted to know more about the Reapers, and Hackett wanted me to meet with a scientist named Dr. Bryson on the Citadel. It seemed like the right thing to do. EDI wanted to thank me for giving the geth this chance, and confirmed something I thought I’d noticed. Legion used “I” instead of “we”. It had become an individual in its last moments. I know that Legion wouldn’t want me to be sad, that it would have chosen to die to make its people free if it could have chosen how it would die. But it was my friend and I was going to miss it.

So, I’d honestly thought Daniels and Donnelly were together from the time I met them back with the Cerberus days. I was surprised to hear Gabby taking Ken to task for not having the balls to say anything to her. Ken tried to justify it with the war, but I told him that he was full of shit. As long as it didn’t interfere with their duty, who the hell cared if they took the happiness they had sitting right there in front of them?

Javik didn’t think much of the peace I’d brokered. He didn’t think it was possible. Maybe it wasn’t, but the geth and the quarians deserved to fail on their own terms, not because of the Reapers.

Garrus commended me on my peacemaking skills. Krogan and turians, geth and quarians… it wasn’t something just anyone could have done.

I found James and Kaidan playing poker. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Kaidan had just lost. He’s good, but James is a damn genius.

“So, you took down a Reaper. On foot. With no real backup to speak of,” Kaidan observed.

“What are you talking about? I had an entire fleet in orbit watching my back.”

“And they’d have been so helpful if you couldn’t get out of the way of the laser. I should probably stop being amazed by your recklessness by now.”

“What’s more reckless, fighting a Reaper on foot or going into the geth consensus?” I asked.

“Reaper," Kaidan said immediately. "Legion had your back with the geth.”

“Either way, if you weren’t already Loco you would be now,” James cut in.

“Heh. Maybe after the war’s over and there’s nothing better for the government to do I’ll get my name changed. What do you think, Kaidan?”

Kaidan chuckled. “I think after this war’s over, it doesn’t matter what your name is, everyone will call you Commander Shepard until you die for good, even if the Alliance gets off their ass and gives you a well-earned promotion or three.”

“It doesn’t matter what my name is now, there are three people who ever call me by it,” I reminded him. “James, do you even know my first name?”

“Yes ma’am! It’s ‘Commander’, ma’am,” James said in a perfect grunt deadpan. “I survived boot camp just like any other marine.”

“He’s got you there, Shepard,” Kaidan said with a grin.

“Yeah. I guess. I should go make sure Tali’s got the engines all repaired now that she’s not spending all her time in the War Room being an admiral.”

Tali was trying to adjust to a world where she was supposed to be looking for agricultural technology instead of ships and the geth were helping mimic infections so the quarians could begin rebuilding their immune systems. Tali admitted that she would have killed the geth – and that she would have been wrong. It seemed like there was a lot more than three years separating her from the kid I saved from Fist.

Allers wanted another interview, and I had a lot of thoughts on the quarian-geth war. I only mentioned the ones about the geth being our allies, and choosing to help organics once they were freed from the Reapers' enslavement.


	58. Garneau

Dr. Bryson was telling me all about Task Force Aurora, a group looking into the Reapers and legends of them, when his assistant Derek Hadley murdered him, saying the darkness can’t be breached. He then blacked out, and couldn’t remember killing Bryson when he came to. EDI caught my call to C-Sec and came out to help investigate. Hadley said he felt like he’d gone somewhere dark and cold, and then there was a loud noise. He seemed genuinely distraught at Bryson’s death, but who knew.

He was telling us about Leviathan and an artifact one of their field researchers, Dr. Garneau, had sent when he crumpled. He repeated again that the darkness can’t be breached, and then was out. Bryson had asked Hackett for help tracking this thing down, and EDI believed Hackett wanted us to be that help. It seemed reasonable. He thought this Leviathan of Dis was a Reaper-killer. If true, we could use it, but it could also cause problems for our side. Still, we were desperate enough that it was worth looking into.

EDI and I searched the lab for clues, and figured out where to go to look for Dr. Garneau. While we were at the Citadel, though, I figured we should take the chance to resupply and drop off some of the things we’d found. I ran into Jacob, who told me that Brynn had just told him she was pregnant. That was amazing, although I was seriously concerned about Brynn’s sanity when Jacob told me she wanted to name the baby Shepard.

Miranda needed to ask a huge favor: access to Alliance resources for something she couldn’t tell me about. It was Miranda, so I figured it was something to do with her sister, so I agreed. The galaxy needs more trust. And if Miranda were going to betray me, well… she’d had plenty of opportunity when she was watching my back. She also wanted to confess again about the control chip – and how she’d realized she was acting just like her father when she argued for it.

Tali was talking to that same turian from earlier, offering assistance above and beyond what he was asking. She told me he’d called her a suit-rat and threatened to have her thrown off the station when she went to the Council for protection after being shot at. He didn’t even remember her. Tali decided she was going to be the bigger person and not remind him, but that it felt kind of nice being able to be in this position.

I found Javik hanging around the embassies. He’d never seen the Citadel – by the time he was born, they’d lost it to the Reapers. He hadn’t truly believed humans shared power with other races until coming here. While we were talking, a hanar came to meet the Enkindler, and Javik ended up giving a speech. He started off badly, but with a little prompting from me, he managed to make it inspiring.

The plan was simple: land, get Garneau, get out. How come it never goes according to plan? There were Reapers at the door. The people inside didn’t seem to care. The access elevator was broken, so we fixed it. The people around just stared at us. It was creepy. They told us they didn’t know anything about a Dr. Garneau, but Garneau had accessed the elevator in the last week.

When we got to the labs, Garrus noted the obvious: the miners were doing just about everything except mining. I found an experiment on plants; Kaidan read out the notes for an evolutionary study of human biotics. We found an unsent message from Garneau – he’d found an artifact and was headed for the mines. We also found a record of an altercation in the mines involving an unidentified male human. Kaidan got the file number so we could break into the med bay. Garneau was there – or so we thought. He tried to tell us Leviathan was a myth, a dead end. I wasn’t buying it. Then we got to talk to Leviathan itself, we thought. It certainly wasn’t Garneau. It tried to kill us and ran.

We followed, of course. It was made trickier by Garneau-leviathan cutting the power to the doors, but we prevailed. Kaidan doesn’t like banshees, I learned. Couldn’t blame him. When we caught Garneau, he blew the artifact and himself to kill the rest of the Reapers. The miners came in, confused and disoriented. They thought it was 2176. That was not good. The only other lead we had was Ann Bryson, so we headed back to the lab to try to find her.

“So, Leviathan can kill a Reaper and indoctrinate people. Who’s thinking what I’m thinking?” Garrus asked.

“It’s a Reaper?” Kaidan said. “Yeah. It fits, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does. Maybe Ann Bryson will have answers for us.”

“Those people… can you imagine what it must be like, losing ten years of your life?” Kaidan asked.

“Yes. Like losing two years, only about five times worse,” I said.

“Wow. Yeah, I guess you would understand that better than anyone. At least with Javik’s 50,000 years, no one’s expecting him to fit back into the life he left behind.”

I accidentally walked in on Gabby and Ken ‘checking the thermal ducts’. So that’s what the kids are calling it these days.


	59. Pylos and Silean Nebulae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard rescues Ann Bryson and has to break the bad news of her father's death to her. While allowing her time to grieve, she rescues a team of engineers from fuel reactors that had gone silent.

When we got back to the lab, first thing I did was have EDI put up a shield around the artifact so it couldn’t indoctrinate us. We looked for clues, and discovered that Ann was in trouble in the Pylos Nebula, that Reapers had found her dig site. We decided it would be faster to look for a more specific location in the lab than fly from system to system, and found the exact planet.

When we arrived, sure enough, there were Reapers swarming the site. We got to climb, jump, and run through buildings taking out husks and cannibals. Every time we’d think we had a clear shot, the reapers would take out a bridge or a ladder or a building we’d intended to cut across.

Can I just say how much fun it is to go nova on a group of husks surrounding me? It's one of the best rushes I've ever known.

Finally, we got to Ann. She’d watched her coworkers die. I could sympathize, but I needed to get her out of there. She started to lead us to the artifact, where we found Reapers surrounding it. Doing something weird with it. It triggered something in Ann, and she told us they’d come too far and the darkness cannot be breached.

Lovely. Of course she was indoctrinated. Garrus took out the artifact while Kaidan did what he could to keep whatever happened to Hadley from happening to Ann. She recovered, and Cortez got the shuttle in so we could get out of there. Ann was so excited about the discoveries, but I had to break her father’s death to her. Dammit I hate doing that.

She deserved a little time, and Hackett told me there was something wrong with fuel reactors in the Silean Nebula. So we got Ann transportation to the Citadel and went to check it out. The reactor had been silent for 72 hours, the turians who had worked there missing. We met up with an engineering team to check it out. Captain Riley, their leader, was one hell of an engineer. Damn good soldier, too. But the Reapers were able to overwhelm her. When she called, I told her I’d send one of my guys to help her. Kaidan took off before I could actually order either of them to go.

Once we’d cleared our side, Cortez called. He couldn’t raise Riley’s team at all, and Kaidan wasn’t responding either. I hit the restart finalization and ran like hell, hoping they’d be at the extraction point. I’d forgotten about the damn boxes that blocked the way back. Once that little obstacle was fixed, I could see the red and blue armor of Riley and Kaidan respectively. Not much for stealth, but damn if bright armor isn’t good for setting minds at ease quickly.

Captain Riley thanked me for saving her and her team. What the hell. Kaidan was standing right there. Hackett did the same thing when I got back to the ship. “Major Alenko did all the work. All I did was offer to send one of my guys – after my side was clear of Reapers. Garrus and I only had a little cleanup to do to get back to the extraction point. Give him the credit.”

As we were heading out, we got an elcor distress signal. That was rather interesting. There was a flotilla that needed rescue. They joined the war effort, though.

Garrus, Tali, Kaidan, and I gathered in the main battery. “Sorry about running off, Shepard,” Kaidan said.

“Saved me having to pick between you two. Why does everyone want to give me the credit for it, though? You’d have offered to go if I hadn’t said I’d send someone,” I said.

Kaidan shrugged. “You’re the legendary Commander Shepard. I don’t mind, really.”

“I don’t want to be a legend. Unfortunately, the galaxy needs one and I got stuck with the job.”

“It’s like being a politician, Shepard. Or an admiral. If you don’t want the job and you hate having to do it, that means you’re exactly the right person for it,” Tali said.

“Ugh. Shut up. I’m grateful we didn’t run into much trouble, though. I feel like I’m only half covered without both of you there,” I said.

“The three of us do work well together. It just wasn’t the same when it was Miranda plugging the gap,” Garrus said.

“What’s the toughest mission you guys had without me?” Kaidan asked. “Not counting the obvious of the Collector base.”

“Horizon,” Garrus said promptly.

“No, seriously,” Kaidan said.

“I mean it!" Garrus protested. "It's not about running into you. That was the first time we ran into one of those Praetorian things, and the scions… that was a tough fight.”

“I’m gonna go with the dead Reaper,” I said. “Expecting any second for the Reaper to power itself up, Scions everywhere, worrying about being indoctrinated…”

“Yeah, but the actual fighting?” Tali interrupted. “The husks just ran right up to us!”

“Which is fine for you, but I carry a sniper rifle. Not everyone likes things short-range,” Garrus said.

“No, you like to keep everything at a distance,” Tali said. Kaidan and I exchanged a glance. Uh-oh.

“Exactly!” Garrus blinked. “Wait, what?”

“What’s the creepiest thing we’ve fought?” Tali asked.

“The thorian,” Garrus said. “What did you mean just then?”

“I’m going with husks, the first time we ran into them on Eden Prime,” Kaidan said when Tali didn’t answer. “Just for the initial shock factor of realizing that I was shooting the people I’d hoped I could save. It’s still upsetting, but the shock isn’t there anymore.”

“Huh, thought you’d say banshees,” I said. “I’m going with that Reaper-human larva thing on the Collector base. The one that if I’d been just a day later would have been made of my own crew.”

Tali shuddered. “You know, for me? It’s rachni.”

“The queen? We never actually fought her,” Garrus protested.

“The little ones, the swarmers. Workers. That scurry around and run over your feet.”

“Thought you liked things up close and personal,” Garrus teased.

I swear you could see Tali’s eyes rolling through her faceplate. “That depends who it is.”

“I’m heading out,” Kaidan said. “Migraine coming on.”

I left with Kaidan, thinking he was faking to leave Garrus and Tali to fight without us watching. He wasn't, so I took him up to my cabin. It was quiet and I could keep it dark. For a few hours, I actually felt like a normal person, someone whose biggest worry was her boyfriend’s headache. Of course it had to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my most recent playthrough, I discovered that you don't actually have to go back through the little box puzzle. Why did no one tell me this the first five times I did this mission???


	60. Chapter 60

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard meets Leviathan, and while recovering, talks about different kinds of heroes with Kaidan.

Kaidan was still sleeping when we got to the Citadel and EDI and I went to meet with Ann. She didn’t hear us come in. Still thinking about her father. They weren’t close; Garret Bryson had always been too busy for his daughter. It was a familiar story. Not personally, but I’d seen it with Tali. And they’d fought over something relatively trivial before Ann left for her project. I felt bad, and offered to come back, but Ann wanted to work. In the end, she volunteered to let us trace the signal Leviathan used to control her. James came over to help keep an eye on her, and to hold her still when Leviathan took hold. We were able to get a partial trace, but I didn’t want to risk Ann too far.

We tracked Leviathan to its world, an ocean world with a lot of wreckage. Leviathan was under the ocean. Cortez thought we’d still be able to get there in the shuttle, though. We found out why there was so much wreckage when we were hit with some kind of pulse. Cortez managed to land us on the wreck of another ship, so we had something to do while he tried to fix it up. There were artifacts all over the place. A lot of people had died here, it seemed.

We would, too, if the Reapers had anything to say about it. They were right behind us. Cortez got the shuttle working – for about five minutes, before another pulse hit it. Couldn’t bring in the Normandy or she’d get hit too. We had to get to Leviathan somehow. Cortez suggested taking a diving mech, if we could find one that hadn’t been too corroded. It sounded crazy, but hey. I’m Commander Shepard. Crazy and reckless is what I do.

Kaidan wasn’t too happy about this. He knew there wasn’t another choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

“Kaidan, I’ve done crazier things,” I pointed out.

“I know. And I know if you don’t do this, we’re stuck here. Just… I don’t like you going alone to talk to something that can indoctrinate people and kill a Reaper.”

“You think I like going down there alone? I’m coming back up.”

“I suppose it’s pointless to ask you to be careful?”

“About as pointless as trying to convince the Council of the Reaper threat until they’ve landed on Palaven and Earth.” Kaidan forced a laugh and stepped away from the Triton. “If I come back to find a Reaper took you out, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“I have Garrus and Cortez, I’ll be fine, Shepard. Good luck.”

Around 2000 feet below, I lost comms with Cortez. The silence around me was eerie. I talked as though Cortez could still hear me, mostly so I didn’t have to hear the silence. Looking around, I remembered talking to Thane about his religion – Kalahira, goddess of oceans and the afterlife. I kind of saw Thane’s point about the ocean being a whole different realm where you had to give up the kind of life you were used to, and this from a kid who grew up in space.

Leviathan wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t a Reaper. Looked like one, but it was wholly organic. It made contact with my mind – I guess it indoctrinated me, to some extent. It told me how its race was first, the apex species, until they noticed that the lesser races that served them kept making machines that destroyed them. To solve this problem, it made a synthetic intelligence. And they were surprised when that intelligence turned around and harvested them to make the first Reaper – Harbinger.

The artifacts were used to keep an eye on what was happening in the galaxy while Leviathan and the others of its kind hid. It had seen that this cycle was different, that we had successfully fought back and were continuing to fight. But it didn’t think my anomaly was enough. Well, screw that. The Reapers were here, on Leviathan’s world, and of all creatures it should know how tenacious Reapers are.

Leviathan saw sense. It released me. Now, I’ll admit I was pretty out of it when I got back to the surface. Couldn’t even stand, let alone fight. And there were two brutes standing right over me. Leviathan kept its word, though. It took control of one of the brutes, the one that was about to smash its claw into me, and made it kill the other. Kaidan dragged me to safety while Garrus got Cortez’s attention. With the pulse offline, we could get out, and with Leviathan in the fight, I was more than ready to get offworld.

I’m not sure how long I was out. I could hear Kaidan talking, but it was dark, and I was cold, and I was having trouble breathing. I pushed through it, basically forcing myself to be all right, and Kaidan managed to bring me to full consciousness. I grinned and claimed I was all right except for a headache, but I think Kaidan saw through it. Didn’t call me on it, just told me not to do that again.

Getting through the reporting in was hell. I hadn’t lied about the headache. I was freezing. I was exhausted. It hurt to breathe. At least I was able to give people the good news. Liara in particular was fascinated. She also teased me about saving scientists in distress at dig sites and told me that if I helped Ann take down the Shadow Broker, she was going to be jealous. And concerned.

Finally, though, I headed up to my cabin. I wasn’t surprised to find Kaidan there shoving a thermos into my hand as soon as I walked in. “It’s going to taste disgusting, but there are headache meds – the good ones – mixed in and it’s hot. So you’re drinking all of it. If you argue, I will knock you out and let Chakwas give you a proper examination.”

I took the thermos with great amusement. “You know, I think I like this taking charge side of you. It’s hot.” One sip of the drink, though, and I wasn’t too sure anymore. “Wow. You said disgusting, but I thought you meant, like, running-low-on-rations navy disgusting, not this came out of the ass of a terminally ill krogan disgusting.”

“Is there any such thing as a terminally ill krogan?” Kaidan asked, gently pushing me to the couch. He grabbed a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around the two of us.

“Not for long, there isn’t.”

“You know, you scare the hell out of me when you pull those risky stunts of yours.”

“Kaidan…”

“No, let me finish before you get all disappointed in me. The recklessness is a big part of who you are, and I love you for it. Someone had to put up the protest down there and you know Garrus never would, but someone had to go down there, and it had to be you.”

“Why does it always have to be me, Kaidan? I’ve spent years fighting the navy’s insistence on making me some great hero. You getting out of Akuze is a lot more worthy of the hero thing than me rallying Elysium to hold off the batarians long enough for the fleet to get there.”

“That’s the thing, though. I’m a survivor. Brain camp, my time wandering, Akuze, Alchera, Mars… I survive. With my sanity intact, even, which is more than a lot of people would be able to say after going through what I’ve been through. And that’s great – but that’s not the hero we need in this fight. You’re a rally point. You’re someone the people can believe in. And that’s what it’ll take to win this war. I know you don’t like it, you don’t want people to think of you as something special, but there’s something about you that makes people willing to follow you to certain death. It’s not the kind of thing that can be taught, Shepard.”

“Leviathan called me an anomaly. It was going to keep me, save me from the harvest.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Kaidan, when this is over and the Reapers are dead, I know there’ll be a long period of rebuilding. Is it selfish of me to want to take a week where I tell the galaxy to fuck off, Commander Shepard’s not in, and Juliet is spending time with her boyfriend… I was going to say on the shore of English Bay, but right now, the last thing I want to see is a large body of water.”

“Selfish? Sure. Doesn’t make it wrong. The Alliance and the Council are both going to demand a lot out of us during rebuilding. I think we have the right to demand some time off. Although if you never want to go to Vancouver again, I wouldn’t blame you a bit.”

“Hey, until the Reapers attacked, Vancouver wasn’t too bad. My own fault on the one big complaint I have about that time.”

“Yeah, what were you thinking, stopping the Reapers from showing up six months early? That’s six months that every race in the galaxy wasted on not doing a damn thing about the invasion!”

I laughed harder at that than it really deserved. “I meant cutting you off. Couple times, James was practically begging me to let him pass on your messages. Never mentioned you by name, but I knew you were trying to reach me.”

“You had your reasons, and I can’t argue too hard with them. That said, you ever do it again…”

“Not sure I could, at this point. Or that it would do any good, I think we’ve burned whatever plausible deniability we had. I think the entire galaxy knows.”

“Feels that way sometimes. It’s gonna be weird, after the war. When the news people have time to run the kinds of stories on us that they used to run about you during the chase for Saren.”

“Oh god, I’m kicking Allers off the Normandy if she tries to run anything about either or both of us.”

“Pretty sure Battlespace isn’t that kind of show, Shepard.” He noticed the now-empty thermos and took it away from me. “How’s your head?”

“Still throbbing like I went a couple rounds with a ryncol barrel, but it’s better. I’m pretty sure I just need to sleep it off, although I wouldn’t argue if my field medic thought I could use some more warming up.”

“Well your field medic had a long day too and wants to get some sleep himself. I don’t see any reason you can’t keep warming up while you sleep. Especially considering where we’re headed.”

“You didn’t bring a sweater this time, either, did you?”

“Wasn’t exactly a priority in getting off Earth, and it hasn’t ever been high on the list of supplies I need from the Citadel.”

“Food, thermal clips, and more food?”

“You know me so well. Come on.”


	61. Return to Omega

Come morning, we were in orbit around Noveria, looking to take out a fighter base Cerberus had hijacked. There wasn’t much to the fight, just killing Cerberus guys while Kaidan hacked into the system and took down the defenses. The frontal attack squad was able to handle it from there.

“Shepard? Can I ask you something?” Kaidan asked when we got back.

“Sure.”

“Why do you always pick me to do the tech work on these missions?”

“Because between you and Garrus, you’re the better hacker,” I said. “Does it bother you?”

“No, just curious. Mostly wanted to know that it wasn’t because you had more faith in Garrus having your back.”

“Nah. Some situations, yeah. I need a sniper, I’m calling on Garrus over you. But general two of us hold the line while the third does something else? Doesn’t really matter.”

We’d gone by the Citadel for a resupplying trip when I got a call from Aria T’Loak to meet her at a dock. Wasn’t that interesting. She’d pulled together a plan to retake Omega from Cerberus and wanted me in on it. I was a little wary of it, but Aria had always done right by me. I got a lot more wary of it when she told me not to bring my team because she didn’t approve of the company I kept. That likely meant specifically the two I most wanted – Archangel and my Alliance angel on my shoulder.

Garrus and Kaidan didn’t like the idea either. “I know Aria’s got a lot of power, but what the hell does she know about planning an invasion?” Kaidan asked. “She’s going to get a lot of people killed, and she doesn’t really care about Cerberus. She’s just pissed that they took her little queendom.”

“Kaidan’s right. Everyone who’s not Aria will be considered expendable on this one. You’ll be on the ‘protect if you can’ list, but that’s not the ‘bring back in one piece’ list. Get in her way, and she’ll turn on you,” Garrus said.

“Still… the chance to kick Cerberus out of Omega… it would do a lot to hamper their movements, and Aria does know the place better than anyone else,” I pointed out.

“Oh, we know. And we know you’re doing it no matter what we say,” Kaidan said. “I also know that if Aria doesn’t send you home in good condition Garrus and I are going to go a little psycho on Omega. I bet we can get James and Liara and Tali to help.”

“They’re not the only ones. I think Wrex would lend us a couple krogan – or come himself. And can you imagine the damage Joker and EDI could cause to Omega if Aria gave them reason?” Garrus chuckled. “Plus I know a secret or two about Omega myself.”

“Nice to know people love me enough to threaten to tear up space stations on my behalf.” I snuggled in to Kaidan a bit. “I’ll be fine. Aria would sell me out in a heartbeat to save herself, but I’m pretty high up the list of people she needs to make this work, so I’m pretty sure she’ll at least try to keep me alive, you know?”

“We know.” Kaidan dropped a kiss on top of my head. “You always do manage to make it back to us eventually.”

“All right. Kaidan, you’re in charge while I’m gone, which means you get the fun responsibility of keeping Javik from throwing anybody out the airlock. Joker’s his most recent target. Apparently Joker insists on calling him Prothy the Prothean.”

I met up with Bray, who got me to Aria’s fleet. She was on a commandeered Cerberus cruiser, planning to infiltrate the fleet. Risky as hell, but what wouldn’t be on this mission? It worked out. General Petrovsky called to warn us that it wouldn’t work, that he’d upgraded the defenses. As it turned out, he was partly right. His cannons knocked us out of the skies, but it didn’t mean the plan failed.

Once I convinced Aria that she needed to evacuate, we crashed on the station. A lot of people didn’t make it. Aria and I did, and we got to the defenses to let the rest of the ships land. I’m pretty sure Petrovsky was listening through security cam when Aria told me where we were headed. Kinda felt bad about that one.

We saw gang tags for a group Aria called the Talons as we went. We also ran into force fields that would disintegrate us on touch. That was going to be a fun challenge. Aria knew a way around, which led to us meeting Nyreen. I was wary, but Aria seemed to know her. Honestly that didn’t help the wariness. But she was ex-turian military, so that did help. The three of us made our way to the bunker to find it under attack. We took out the engineer hacking the cannon, and the cannons covered Cerberus while we got inside.

Aria didn’t trust Nyreen either. She was a little scary intent on getting back her station. Not enough of the army had made it through, so she decided we would recruit the Talons. Didn’t seem to matter what the Talons thought of being recruited. Nyreen disappeared before we set out, much to Aria’s displeasure. Thankfully, she had the sense not to kill Bray for it.

We set out for the Talons and heard Cerberus was after them too. Well, we could probably use that. Of course, then the Talon leader turned out to be Nyreen. She didn’t take us being on her turf well, but she did agree to work with us at least long enough to secure her outpost. When we got to the outpost, Nyreen told us about Cerberus’s latest toy: adjutants. Reaper-based creatures that reproduced by attacking others.

Aria’s plan was to incite the people of Omega so that when our army got into a full-scale brawl with Cerberus, the civilians would join in. Nyreen hated it, but it meant she and her Talons wouldn’t sit by and let it happen without fighting to save the civilians. I was starting to like Nyreen. Ahz found the generator, I found a way to get there, and Aria and Nyreen thought we should go.

Nyreen found a couple minutes while Aria was giving orders to pull me aside. She’d noticed I didn’t work the way Aria did, and asked me to do what I could to protect the innocent people of Omega. Well, relatively innocent. She’d had a difficult time breaking away from Aria, but she’d done it. She’d reformed an entire street gang, and she didn't want to see Aria burn the people to protect the place.

We headed out to get to the reactor, and the first thing we found was Cerberus corpses ripped to pieces. The door was sealed – we had to restore power in order to restore the door. This brought us face to face with an adjutant. Nyreen froze. That wasn’t good. Aria and I had her back, but we were probably gonna see more of them.

On the way to the reactor, Aria kept getting more outraged by the way Cerberus was abusing her mines. Nyreen kept getting outraged at the way Cerberus was abusing the people of Omega. It was kind of funny.

I should have realized that the open path wasn’t an oversight but a trap. Petrovsky had anticipated what we were doing, and had his trap ready to spring when we got to the reactor. Aria went a little nuts, using her biotics to force open the force field around us long enough for me to get out. Petrovsky had another ace up his sleeve: the generator for the force field also powered life support. Aria didn’t care. Nyreen and I did. I remembered an artist named Nef, a quarian Pilgrim named Kenn, a biotic named Kaidan. The people of Omega weren’t, by definition, bad people, just people who’d run into hard times. I wasn’t going to kill them if I could help it. It took longer, but I was able to reroute the power. And considering that Nyreen is the one who got injured, Aria’s ingratitude was particularly galling.

We got word of Cerberus engineers trying to take out the central supports. Aria and I went to put a stop to that while Nyreen led the Talon assault on Afterlife. We found video logs where Cerberus explained what the hell was going on: they were deliberately creating adjutants, and had learned to control the conversion. We made it to Afterlife just in time to watch Nyreen sacrifice herself to keep adjutants from tearing apart civilians.

I’d have been disappointed if Petrovsky didn’t have one final trick up his sleeve. He trapped Aria in some sort of biotic field, leaving me running around taking out the generators and fighting off adjutants and normal Cerberus troops both. I did it, of course. And then… he surrendered. I was sure I was going to have to rip Aria off of him, but instead, Aria checked herself. She let him live. She blamed me for making her go soft. Maybe I had. But the people of Omega were in much better hands, even if she went back to the same hardass bitch she’d always been once away from my influence.

It seemed like half the Normandy was at the airlock when I got back, which was odd, because I’d only sent the signal that I was back a few minutes before. I will forever wonder how the hell Liara beat both Kaidan and Garrus to hug me. After that, though, Kaidan hung back so he could claim last hug. May have been his plan all along, because then he didn’t have to let go while I told the story.

“Nyreen Kandros?” Garrus said when I was finished. “I remember her. We had some classes together. She was a tech genius. I always wondered what happened to her, one day she was doing rifle drills with me and a few others, the next day she was gone. Biotic, huh?”

“Apparently. I thought humans were bad about biotic exile.”

“Humans don’t have the history with biotics being trained mostly as spies and assassins. You just don’t have much history to speak of where biotics are concerned. Not saying the turians are right, just saying why we do it.”

“So, what crisis does the galaxy need me to solve now?” I asked Kaidan. “After watching Aria spare Petrovsky, I’m beginning to believe there may be something to this anomaly crap.”

“Uh-oh, that sounds dangerous,” Kaidan teased. “Irissa wants you to meet her in Udina’s office. Has to be you; I offered to go because we didn’t know when you’d be back but she refused.”

“Damn. If I hear Dalatrass Linron’s joined the Shepard Fan Club, I’ll go ahead and run for president of it. I should probably go before Irissa changes her mind.”


	62. Thessia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thessia burns, and Shepard runs through the fire to get the last piece they need to build the Crucible... only to be too late.
> 
> How many times can a soldier get beat down before the fight goes out of her?

Irissa told me there was a secret artifact on Thessia that could help us identify and find the Catalyst. She hadn’t mentioned it before because she didn’t want to upset the current balance of power in the galaxy. No kidding, the asari were the most advanced race and had a lot of power, of course she didn’t want to upset that. But the Reapers would upset it more than I would, so she was sharing it now.

We got to Thessia to find it burning. The Reapers came in force. Liara’s desperation was sad to see, but other than that, I wasn’t taking this one as hard as Earth or Palaven. The asari had warning that the Reapers were out there and didn’t step up to help out. Liara identified the coordinates as the Temple of Athame, an old religion that had few followers left, but that had classified government funding.

Getting to the artifact was going to cost a lot of asari soldiers their lives, and I knew it. I hate giving those orders, but we needed the Catalyst, and to get the Catalyst, we needed the asari artifact.

Okay, look. I know how hard it is to see your homeworld burning. So did Kaidan. So did Garrus. Because we’d all been there, all watched it. So I could sympathize with Liara, but did she really think the fall of Thessia was more tragic, more worthy of grief, than the fall of Earth or Palaven? That was the old Liara, the one who still naively believed in the benevolence of Protheans and that the galaxy worked the way it should. We needed the Shadow Broker on this mission.

We got to the temple. It had military-grade encryption on the barriers around the door. The scientists weren’t there to let us in, so Liara had to hack our way through. Inside, we looked around at various artifacts. Liara grew more and more disturbed as Kaidan pointed out just how much the depictions of Athame resembled a Prothean. Finally, we found what we were after – a Prothean beacon concealed in a statue of Athame.

After all their preaching about how anything Prothean-related had to be shared with the galaxy, the asari were hiding a goddamn beacon. That explained so goddamn much about how the asari managed to stay ahead of everyone else. Between at least one of their goddesses turning out to be Prothean, giving them a head start, and the Prothean beacon… ugh. Those smug, self-righteous bastards. Irissa knew. Tevos knew the whole time. And they picked now to share?

We figured out how to activate it and met Vendetta, the VI in charge. At first, he didn’t want to tell us anything, since he knew we had Reapers and believed we had already failed. We hadn’t. Not yet. But Kai Leng showed up with a hologram of the Illusive Man, so Vendetta shut down. We argued over controlling the Reapers versus destroying them. Vendetta had mentioned the same thing happened in his cycle – they had their own version of Cerberus.

I couldn’t talk Tim down, shocker. We fought Kai Leng. He had some of the cheapest tricks I’ve ever seen, and when he realized he couldn’t win on his own even with his tricks, he had his gunship target the supports and bring down the temple on us. He got away with the information.

I don’t know how long I stood listening to the comm bleep. For all I was furious at Irissa for hiding this until now – as it turned out, too late – I couldn’t look her in the eye and tell her I failed. I couldn’t. But I had to. She was so sure I’d come through, she never dreamed I’d fail. And when you think about it, that’s because I have a pretty damned impressive track record. But I wasn’t good enough.

God, was it just the day before I was starting to believe in my own legend?

My squad assembled in the War Room. Liara of all people tried to tell me that it was okay, that it wasn’t my fault. James wanted to kick Cerberus in the balls. I was with him. Traynor told us where to go to do it. Once again, she’d put together some brilliant data analysis. They were in the Iera system. Of course they were. My eyes caught Kaidan’s and I could see him thinking the same thing I was. The only thing in that system was Sanctuary, on Horizon – supposedly, a safe haven for refugees.

Anderson called. He understood. He’d been beaten, and by Kai Leng. I knew what I needed to do, but it still helped to hear it from him.

The real kick in the ass came from Joker, though. He told a bad joke about the asari’s losses, and I lost it at him. He told me about his colony – Tiptree. He didn’t even know if his family was alive. His little sister was only fifteen. I suddenly flashed to a conversation I’d overheard in Huerta – an asari commando who’d had to kill a fifteen-year-old farmgirl. Named Hilary. On Tiptree.

“Joker, I… I’m sorry. Your sister…”

“She’s fifteen. She may have made it out, Commander.”

“No, listen. When I was in Huerta delivering that chemical burn treatment, I overheard an asari talking about helping evacuate Tiptree. She and a fifteen-year-old girl named Hilary escaped the farm the first time the Reapers hit it. She mentioned Hilary taking out Reapers with a stick.”

“Sounds like Gunny,” Joker said. “What happened?”

“They went back to see if they could rescue anyone else. The others were already indoctrinated, and Hilary… she didn’t make it, Joker.”

Joker’s mouth moved a couple times before he managed to get the sound out. “Damn Reapers. At least she died a badass, huh?”

“Yeah. Joker, I’m sorry. You’re right. I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, and Anderson for thinking of it, but… right now, it’s not what I need.”

“What you need is to find Kai Leng and rip his lungs out,” Joker said. “Can’t help you with that, sorry. But I can try to find the light side to everything, put the damn nickname to use. Because you’re stressed, and it’s my fault.”

“How is it your fault?”

“The only reason you died the first time is because you had to come get me. Because I was stupid and wouldn’t leave when the alarms sounded. Every day for the past three years, I’ve had to look at myself in the mirror and live with the knowledge that I’d killed our best chance for survival against the Reapers. If we’d had two more years to convince people? If you hadn’t had the Cerberus monkey on your back? Maybe Thessia’s flourishing. Maybe Hilary’s still alive. And you know the worst part? Everyone who should hate me, like for instance _Kaidan_ … I saw his face when he saw me crawl out of that escape pod alone. When I had to confess what I’d done. He was devastated… but he wasn’t angry. Not at me. He should’ve hated me.”

“Joker… I couldn’t leave the best pilot in the fleet behind, could I?”

“Would’ve looked bad on the report, that’s for sure.”

“How many times in the last year have you saved my ass by pulling off some crazy maneuver only you could have managed? You saved my entire crew by unshackling EDI. You’re a hero, Joker.”

“Now who’s the joker?” But there was a hint of a smile, so I hadn’t ruined a friendship.

EDI interrupted. “Commander, you should probably get to the port cargo bay. Dr. T’Soni just went in there, and her biometrics are extremely out of kilter.”

I ran. Sure enough, Liara was confronting Javik about Athame. Javik said she was indeed Prothean. It nearly got out of hand, but I stepped in before Liara could unleash. Javik claimed that the Protheans thought the asari would be the ones to stop things in this cycle, so they were guided at times. My bullshit detector was pinging hard, but I wasn’t going to tell Liara that. She needed to hear that. 

I found Garrus and Tali debating who should go talk to Liara. Kaidan had already been in, and he thought she’d pull through, but Tali was still worried. She didn’t want to go because she’d just regained her homeworld, and thought that would be something mean to confront Liara with. Garrus didn’t want to be a reminder of everyone who was dying, what with Palaven.

Liara was ranting to EDI about how much of a joke she felt because her mother had hidden the beacon from her. EDI pointed out that Benezia probably didn’t want her exposed to political blowback should it be discovered. Liara asked me how many people died because she promised we’d save them and demanded their help. I told her the truth: no one died because of her. They died because they hadn’t listened to us warning them for years now. Liara was one of the loudest voices sounding the alarm. The fall of Thessia had nothing to do with her. Besides, we hadn’t lost the asari. Not yet.

There was some good news – Garrus had finally heard from his family. They’d made it off Palaven and were safe. He’d had to make a tough call with the Primarch, though – the turian fleet was no longer on the offensive against the Reapers, holding back for the final push with the Crucible. Great. More pressure on me. Garrus was more worried about me, though. I was glad I had him to talk to. He could handle the truth – that the pressure was getting to me. Everything depended on the Crucible, the Crucible needed the Catalyst, and I’d just let the information we needed to get the Catalyst walk out in the hands of Cerberus.

But even Garrus didn’t want to hear the full extent of the truth, that I didn’t know if I had it in me to keep getting up anymore. I’d never felt like this before. Garrus reminded me I had friends who would pick me up when I fell. I wonder where they are now. If I’m gonna live, I need them so much. I have to have faith in Joker, even though… even _if_ he had to do it alone. Garrus reminded me of something else, too – Thessia was lost before we even got there. They didn’t fall because I needed to get to the temple, we didn’t lose an entire world because I lost to Kai Leng. And we weren’t beaten yet.

I checked my mail before I collapsed into Kaidan’s arms. Kai Leng had a message for me: it basically boiled down to neener neener neener. I wanted to rearrange his face. Kaidan promised to help.

Come morning, we were at Ontarom. Hitting a Cerberus communications facility before we went to Horizon. The only survivor was Grace Sato, basically a civilian, who had to talk us through where to go. She did really well considering, and thank god for Cortez. There was only really one moment where we needed to pull her through, which was getting the last set of coordinates, and Cortez did that by going to pick her up special while we hit the last hacking site. It worked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is such a difficult mission. But Liara... I just want to slap her. Unless you bring Tali or EDI, you're bringing a team of people who've watched their own homeworlds burn. Shepard, Kaidan, Ashley, James, and Garrus were *on* their worlds when they burned. Javik watched his entire CIVILIZATION burn. And Liara spends the entire mission whining like a teenager who got told they can't go to the big party.


	63. Chapter 63

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard returns to Horizon and discovers something worse than an old boyfriend who doesn't trust her anymore.

Horizon was close. I thought about not taking Kaidan on this one, but one of the things we’d always used to justify breaking regs was not letting it affect our jobs. I didn’t take Kaidan everywhere because we were together, I took him because he and Garrus and I were a very effective team who knew each other well enough to predict each other’s moves and never leave anyone uncovered. Bringing someone with us never seemed to affect that. Leaving one of them behind did.

As we approached Sanctuary, Cortez picked up a signal from Oriana Lawson warning people to stay away. That meant Miranda. EDI thought we’d found our link to Cerberus, but I wasn’t so sure. Still, we were definitely on track for something big. Sanctuary was ripped to shreds, and there wasn’t anyone to greet us when we landed. Not what would be expected at a refugee center.

A Cerberus shuttle drew our attention – and then we saw the Harvester. Reapers attacking during a Cerberus evacuation. This made less sense than before. Still, not losing any tears over the Reapers and Cerberus fighting each other.

We found security cam footage that proved there had been refugees here. Various logs and things explaining how Sanctuary worked. I didn’t like the sound of integration. 60% of adults, 85% of children, keeping families together… that last part should sound like a good thing, but if Cerberus was in charge, it just made me wonder if families were being kept together so that no one would ask questions if someone didn’t come back from integration.

Then we found a message Miranda had recorded. This was a Cerberus facility, not a refugee camp. Sanctuary had been a lie all along. I felt sick thinking of all the people who had come here looking for safety. Miranda also said that her father was running things. That made even less sense. Reapers, Cerberus, and Miranda’s crazy father. I didn’t understand how it all fit together, but I knew I wasn’t going to like it.

We found a back door… hidden in a giant swimming pool. What the fuck, Cerberus. There was a lot of Reaper tech lying around. Then we found the control center, and the video. They turned refugees into Reapers. That might explain why the Reapers were attacking, although you’d think they’d be happy about it. Refugees unsuitable for conversion were sent to recycling. I didn’t want to know what that meant. Obviously death, but beyond that… Kaidan found another video, this one showing Miranda shutting down the power. With Kai Leng not far behind her. Good news: Kai Leng was here and we could kill the bastard. Bad news: Miranda didn’t know it.

Evidently, what Henry Lawson was doing was studying Reaper communication. That didn’t bode well. I’m guessing they made some kind of breakthrough, and that’s what Kai Leng had come for. We also learned that they’d experimented with red sand, but found adrenalin and its equivalents to be the quickest way to convert people. Kaidan wanted to know what kind of monsters we were dealing with. I did too, although I had a better idea.

We found another message from Miranda. This one showed video of her father talking to Tim, talking about taking control of the Reaper forces. Tim wanted to use it to take control of the Reapers. Of course he did. The final image, though… Kai Leng ambushing Miranda. We had to move, and fast. Of course, that bastard didn’t have his freakin’ gunship with him this time. I hoped.

We fought our way through Reaper forces… or maybe the Cerberus versions of them… until we got to the tower. There, we found the Lawson family reunion. The shot we heard was Oriana trying to kill Henry. Henry took her hostage. Miranda wasn’t dead, but she was weak. I talked Henry into letting Oriana go, intending to spare his life in return, but Miranda wasn’t as weak as I’d thought. She killed him. I can’t say I’m sorry I made that mistake.

I was all set to hand the shipping and shuttle data to Traynor and wait, but Miranda had thought of everything. She’d planted a tracer on Kai Leng. We could trace him straight to Tim.


	64. Orders from Hackett

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard gets unexpected orders from Admiral Hackett and struggles to convince herself to obey them.

Admiral Hackett called to check in only minutes after I sent my report. “Shepard, I know you want to go after Kai Leng, and we do need to take down Cerberus. But I’m worried. You and the Normandy have been running hard for so long, and this is gonna be the final push. Get to the Citadel and take some shore leave while the Normandy gets itself cleaned up. I need you and your crew in top condition. Taking down Cerberus, the Reapers are going to know we’re coming for them next, and it’ll tell us what we need to finish the Crucible. We can’t protect it for long.”

“Sir… we’re fine,” I protested.

“No, you’re not. I’ve been reading the reports, Shepard. The Cerberus base won’t go anywhere without us knowing about it. You and Normandy both need some time to get things squared away before the final push. This is an order, Commander.”

“Understood, sir.” I didn’t, exactly. But Hackett was right, and he’d stood by me when I was a terrorist, when I was a war criminal. I’d never refused even a request from Hackett before. If he was going to make this an order, I was going to follow it.

“Besides, I want to have the Crucible as close to ready to go when you hit that base as we can. We need a couple weeks on it, Shepard. We’re doing well, but it’s huge.”

“Understood, sir. And thank you.” That actually made more sense to me. I did get that this was, basically, our endgame and there wouldn’t be a chance to stop and breathe between the fight against Cerberus and the fight for Earth. 

EDI was having trouble understanding why humans showed altruism when their only goal should be survival. I helped her to realize that sometimes, there are things worth dying for. She got there when she realized that not accepting death over submission was being just like a Reaper.

Javik was his usual cheerful self about how what we saw at Sanctuary was no big deal and our cycle was a bunch of wimps who couldn’t stomach this war. He asked about the old Normandy, and how I’d been resurrected. He noted it wasn’t like his, because my loved ones were still there.

“There is one thing I do not quite understand. You and the human soldier… you are joined?”

I rolled my eyes. “Which human soldier? There are a lot of those on this ship.”

“The Kaidan soldier,” Javik said.

Close enough. “Sure, I guess you could say that. What about it?”

“I don’t say it. Your pheromones do. And yet, on a number of occasions, I have observed you to seek out the turian soldier for things that a mate should provide.”

“Yeah? What do my pheromones say about Garrus?” This should be interesting.

“If the Kaidan soldier and the quarian were no longer in existence, he would be your mate. In my cycle, such things would not be tolerated.”

“Well, Tali and Kaidan have nothing to worry about. Garrus is my best friend, and I couldn’t do what I do without him, but it’s not like that. And it’s not like we can read pheromones like you can.”

“Two eyes, no pheromones, no ability to read through touch… it’s a wonder this cycle knows anything about the outside world.” But then Javik had an interesting question. “Commander. The memory shard. If your people had such a thing… if you had forgotten everything, the faces of those you cared for, the color of the sky above your world. Would you want to remember, even though it meant watching everything you loved be destroyed?”

“I can’t even imagine not remembering Kaidan or Garrus or Tali or any of them. And watching them all die… to be honest, I’m amazed that you’re here to ask the question. If all my friends were dead, all my family… I’d probably kill myself as soon as the Reapers have paid for it. But to not remember, knowing how the story ends… I honestly don’t know which would be worse.”

“I don’t either. Which is why the shard is still there. Why I have not used it yet.”

I was a lot of things to a lot of people. I'd pulled off some amazing things. Somehow, helping a Prothean figure out whether to flood himself with memories of watching his race die was beyond me. “There’ll be time to decide after the Reapers are dead. Maybe with your people avenged, it’ll be easier to deal with the memories? I don’t know, Javik. Did you have a mate?”

“I did not. By the time I was old enough to take one, we were too close to the end of our war for such things. The only reproduction any Protheans were doing was with asari, in the hopes that something of our people would remain.”

“Liara tells me it doesn’t exactly work like that.”

“None of our DNA would survive. But asari reflect certain traits of their fathers, just like any other child. Liara does not understand this because her father was asari. It was hoped that something of us would survive to the end of this cycle. It seems to have failed.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to watch humans decide to stop reproducing.”

“You and the Kaidan human have not yet reproduced.”

“We have hope that this war will be over soon. Besides, I might not be able to.”

“In my cycle, with the exception of asari, dating between species was forbidden. It was not useful. It appears to be different here.”

“A lot of things are, Javik. A lot of people in our time have no interest in reproducing, and aside from the quarians and until recently the krogan, most races are perfectly okay numerically without forcing things.”

“I see. And you did not need to worry about war against the Reapers depleting your forces. And your cycle is quite odd in the way it shares power.”

“Your cycle didn’t, I know, but we can’t be the first cycle to not have one race on top and everyone else subservient or dead…”

“I believe that to be what makes this cycle different. Why your cycle has hope that mine did not, or the cycles before us.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Traynor had warned me that Tali was taking Miranda’s near-death hard. I didn’t get why, but I went to check on her… and found her with a bottle of turian brandy and an emergency induction port. I should have realized that Tali would respect the hell out of Miranda for standing up to her father so thoroughly and consistently. Of course, Miranda was okay, so this seemed a little overdramatic. But it was Tali. I grabbed a bottle of brandy I could drink and downed one with her, and then called Garrus to come help her finish the bottle and keep an eye on her.

Okay, there might have been other motives, too.

I was very surprised to find Kaidan in the observation lounge. I was even more surprised to find him hitting the wall. Apparently, he was working off the rage from Sanctuary. I had some better ideas for how to do that. Kaidan didn’t take much convincing, either.

When we got to the Citadel, I passed along Hackett’s order of shore leave. Some of the crew was thrilled, some were incredulous. Kaidan and Garrus followed me as I got ready to leave. “What’s the real story?” Kaidan asked.

“Crucible’s not ready and Hackett doesn’t want us taking out the Illusive Man until all we have left is the Catalyst. The less warning the Reapers get, the better.”

“Oh. I… guess that makes sense,” Garrus said. “Shore leave, huh? Even with the Normandy banged up, it somehow doesn’t feel right.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s an order. From Hackett.” I pulled my bag over my shoulder. Time to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yaaaaaaaaay Citadel!


	65. Sushi Trip

Of course, I can’t even do shore leave right. Hackett had suggested I go to Anderson’s apartment. My first thought when I got there was to wonder what the hell definition of apartment they were using, since this thing was frickin’ huge. Anderson called and he told me the apartment was mine, that I needed it a lot more than he did and he wasn’t planning on leaving Earth after the war was over, regardless of outcome. I was overwhelmed and figured I’d just take it for now, and give him the opportunity to change his mind once the war was over and Kahlee had the chance to knock some sense into him.

Seriously… a bar, two sitting areas, a bedroom with a giant walk-in closet, kitchen, dining room, a study with a pool table… and that was the first floor. There were two more bedrooms upstairs, along with a balcony and another sitting area. One of the bathrooms had a hot tub. Clearly that was my bedroom, mine and Kaidan’s. The rest of it, we could sort out later.

I had just gotten comfortable on the bed to spend some time in a fantasy of the war being over and actually having a home when an automated notice told me I had a message. Joker wanted to go over some things with me, and suggested meeting at this really fancy sushi place. Well, I’m not a big sushi fan, I like my fish too much, but if Joker was buying, only fair he pick the place. I did a little research so I could dress appropriately, though, and I was really surprised Joker of all people would pick this place.

Turns out he hadn’t. We’d both been misled thinking the other wanted to meet with us about something. Maya Brooks showed up to tell me there was someone trying to kill me. Joker and I had the same thought, but this was different. Someone was hacking my files, targeting me specifically. She was just about to try to explain when some mercs showed up and started shooting up the place.

I sent Joker to get the crew. He didn’t like being used as bait, but it worked, I got a gun. I managed to take down the mercs and get to Brooks, just in time for her to take a bullet for me. The mercs shot out the fish tank. I fell through the aquarium, down several floors, doing everything I could to slow my fall and just ending up with a ton of bruises and some lovely bleeding cuts for it.

Brooks used up the medigel. Great. I told her to call C-Sec while I tried to find somewhere to either get out or get help. I spotted a skycar lot across the gap and had to figure out a way over. Brooks suggested I stay off the comm, since it was hacked, but that sounded stupid. It sounded even stupider when she yelled at Kaidan for putting me in danger. Kaidan was close. Let the mercs come at me. And then Garrus’s blessed voice… definitely let the mercs come, if those two were close.

C-Sec apparently had the area on lockdown, which was weird. Maybe the mercs had triggered it. But with Commander Bailey being a personal friend, all Brooks would’ve had to do was drop my name to get a shuttle there ASAP. Kaidan heard the gunfire. Well, he had a direction to head. Garrus asked what the hell the alarm was about. I told him I thought I’d make this more interesting. I also told Kaidan everything I knew about the mercs: they had guns and they didn’t like me. Kaidan didn’t find that as funny as I did, though I could hear Garrus’s snort. Brooks told us to stay off the comms. I told her to go fuck herself, if she thought a few mercs would cut me off from my men she was a complete idiot.

I could see the mercs shooting through the glass when I got to the skycar lot. I stood back and watched Kaidan slam them with his biotics. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go to a skycar lot again without getting a little hot and bothered. And as much as I was hating my outfit right then, since it was really hard to run in the stupid heels I’d found in Anderson’s closet – I’m assuming they were Kahlee’s, otherwise I really don’t want to know – Kaidan approved. It probably didn’t hurt that the already tight dress was dripping wet and clinging.

The gate was locked. I found the office and was about to blow the door open when Kaidan stopped me and did what I should’ve – asked the volus inside to open the gate for us. Sue me, I was having a bad day. Although rapidly improving.

The C-Sec car Brooks sent was full of mercs. That wasn’t as much a problem as it sounds, because Wrex happened to be around when Joker put out the call for help. Watching a krogan in action was a thing of beauty in itself, although completely different from the way Kaidan was. Cortez was on his way with a shuttle, and Wrex, Kaidan, and I were more than a match for the mercs who kept coming at us.


	66. Chapter 66

Back home – and how weird it felt to say that – Brooks went a little nuts wondering how we survived. Wrex and Kaidan and I just wanted to know what the hell was going on. I started to call Bailey, but Brooks thought it would put Bailey at risk, and Kaidan agreed. I thought Bailey would want to know about mercs using C-Sec shuttles, but agreed to hold off until we had some better idea what was going on. Brooks explained that someone had hacked into my classified records, and could have my military or Spectre codes. Well, that got my attention.

I was about to put up a roundup call on my squad when Joker came in, leading the entire rest of my squad. Liara offered to dig into the pistol I’d picked up with, as it was our best lead on the mercs.

A lot of the squad was upset with me for breaking the aquarium at the sushi place. Not my fault! Joker still objected to being used as bait. What else was I supposed to use, the fish? Brooks was worried about having to write her report about getting shot. She didn’t seem to like my suggestion of making a template. EDI let me know that civilian casualties were restricted to fish. That made me feel a little better. What was it Mordin had said that time, casualties were limited to species without members capable of calculus? Javik started to tell me what they did in his cycle when something like this happened, but then decided things like this didn’t happen in his cycle. I laughed. Garrus thought it was cool having a secret hideout – but he didn’t like the big windows. I reminded him that’s what blinds were for.

I found Kaidan watching the fireplace. “Hey, there. I should get attacked more often, if I’m gonna get shows like that when my big strong hero shows up to rescue me. That was hot.”

“Why, thank you.” Kaidan couldn’t help the grin. “Outfit or not, I’m having trouble imagining you as a damsel in distress…”

“Maybe not, doesn’t mean I didn’t love having you swoop in and save the day. What would I do without you?”

“Heh… you’ll never find out.” I better not have to. You hear that, universe?

The next morning, after nowhere near enough sleep, Liara told me she had something. The mercenaries were a private military called CAT6 and as the name suggested, most were criminals, drug abusers, or otherwise scum no decent military would take. She also had a call between a casino owner, Elijah Khan, and our identity thief. The next step, obviously, was to talk to Khan. He didn’t like that his weapon had shown up on the news and cut off his buyer.

There was a charity event at the casino that night. Liara got three tickets. The plan was to send someone through an air shaft to disable a door, while the other two took care of guards and any other security outside. Tech would likely be detected, so Tali and EDI were out, most of the guys were just too big, Joker and air shafts seemed like a bad combination, people would notice if Commander Shepard arrived at an event and then couldn’t be found… fortunately, we had Brooks, and she just happened to know how to work without tech.

It didn’t take long to decide that I was taking Kaidan. After all, to outsiders, this was going to look like a date. I sure as hell wasn’t letting the media see me on a date with someone else. As it was, walking down the red carpet was amazing, smiling and waving and leaning on Kaidan’s arm. Although having Brooks walking with us made it a little weird.

“You look radiant, Shepard,” Kaidan said.

I couldn’t stop the chuckle. “As in beautiful, or as in causing invisible damage?”

“It can’t be both? Ow, my heart.” That got another chuckle.

Brooks didn’t find it nearly as funny. She seemed happy to leave when we got out of the paparazzi alley. Liara and EDI were on the comm, ready to help out as needed. They suggested mingling. Good thing Kaidan was with me. We ran into Sha’ira, which was nice. Then Brooks called. She needed us to cut the alarm. Liara had sent along these lenses that would let me see wiring – of course, they also made my eyes this creepy, glowing yellowish-white. Liara also sent along a hack that would disable a security camera, but only for a short time.

We mingled and disabled alarms and distracted guards. Some of the people I met were really amazing, like the woman running for Ward Council so she could help the refugees. Others were frankly alarming, like the ditz who thought flaws didn’t make diamonds less valuable. I’d been educated online too, but it had actually done its job in my case.

We finally got to the panic room. Khan was dead, and the computer was wiped – half-assedly. I was able to call the identity thief. The ID scrambler they were using was good. Very good. But I was willing to bet that EDI was better. The conversation was a bunch of trash-talk and threats, and Brooks wasn’t able to trace it. We took the data drives back to EDI.

Had to agree with Kaidan that, except for the host, it was one hell of a party. And that we should get dressed up more often, because whoa. Kaidan teased me with a story about the vorcha mafia, a casino, five thousand credits, and a bottle of whiskey. He was telling me that story, he just didn’t know it yet.


	67. The Archives

Brooks and EDI found something on the computers, although Brooks got distracted gushing about being in the presence of legends. Some of my crew – Joker – ate it up, but I thought it was irritating. Brooks was a great kid, but she had some growing up to do. At least she understood why my team was great – we loved each other. We weren’t just an assortment of people who served on the same ship, we were a team. We were family. Sure, after this mission some of them would probably leave, but I know that if in five years something crops up and I ask Tali or Garrus for help, they’ll come if they can.

Speaking of coming if they can, Glyph let us know that my access codes were being used in the Citadel Archives. Those Archives were huge… we were gonna need everyone for this. Obviously, I was taking Garrus and Kaidan with me. The others divided into Team Hammerhead – Cortez, EDI, Liara, and Javik – and Team Mako – Wrex, Tali, Brooks, and Vega.

We finally met our mysterious identity thief. Is it really an identity theft when it’s a clone stealing the original’s life? This was a clone of me from the Lazarus Project. She thought I was wasting my life, so she was going to steal it. I think there were a lot of people who would argue with the idea of me wasting my life.

Apparently, this Shepard thought I should be a lone wolf. I disagree, obviously. I can’t do what I’m doing without my friends. Of course, she had a point – she didn’t have my memories, so she’d never fool my friends. Still, calling them the Cult of Shepard was low. And taunting Kaidan about Virmire? That’s when I’d had it with her. And then, she stole the Normandy. This bitch was not me, and she was going down.

I sent Glyph off to find her. Kaidan found a gun from the First Contact War. Garrus made me laugh – of course the first meeting between humans and turians involved bullets. We continued pushing forward, but Team Hammerhead ran into trouble and got pinned down. I could hear the taunting about where’s your commander now. Fortunately, my team had faith. And it was badass when the hail of bullets fell around me and I looked up to see ten people with various guns all with the singular purpose of taking out the bad guys trying to kill me.

My team is full of comedians. I did enjoy hearing the mercs wondering why they didn’t have a krogan. But when Liara told Brooks to follow my lead and let the squad do all the work, well… one, that’s not true, and two, how’s Brooks ever going to learn if she cowered behind the team? Glyph was distracted and not paying attention to me versus other me. Javik was not impressed.

Glyph warned us about Razor Squad – the other me was apparently fascinated by pointy things – and an elcor mating totem. Mako and Hammerhead had time to trashtalk each other while we took them out. We moved on, and that’s when we lost contact with our teams. I didn’t think too much of it, my people were good, it was probably just radio interference.

Brooks called to say the clone was jamming the radios, and she’d been hurt and left behind while the rest of Team Mako forged ahead. Something didn’t sit right with me, but Brooks was hurt, no time to think. Because I’m an idiot, apparently. If the clone was jamming the signals, how was Brooks calling on them? Turns out, Brooks wasn’t with Alliance Intelligence, she was with the clone. Ex-Cerberus. Xenophobic. This whole thing was a setup.

In retrospect, Brooks telling me I’d saved more alien lives than human is hilarious, given how often I’ve been accused of putting humans first when I really don’t care what species the people are, if they’re in trouble, I’m going to try to save them. At the time, though, I was just pissed. Sure, they were clever. They got my Spectre codes, they got my biometrics, I led Brooks straight to Khan. But they’d overlooked one thing. No one who betrays me survives. They may have sealed me and my friends in iridium vaults, yeah. But they overlooked something else, too.

They overlooked Glyph.

So had Garrus and Kaidan, to be fair. They didn’t understand why I was wasting time wondering if I really sounded like that. The look on Kaidan’s face when I called Glyph to let us out was priceless. We made our way out of the archives, and Joker picked us up. Of course I took Garrus and Kaidan with me when Joker said me plus two. Wrex and Javik both complained about me always taking them. Whatever. Those bastards were stealing my ship, I didn’t have time to worry about whose feelings were hurt by my choices.


	68. Saving the Normandy

The mercs tried to stop us, but we made it to the Normandy before they got their emergency takeoff. We met up with Traynor in the access area. She was furious at me for throwing her off the ship, until I proved it was me and explained the clone situation. Traynor knew the ship, and her fancy toothbrush saved the day by getting us in.

My clone had left the mercs as cannon fodder. Well, I was happy to oblige, this time. And then… then I found Fuzzbucket. In a heap of stuff to be thrown out. It was on, now. You do not mess with my people, and you definitely do not mess with my pets! I wished for a moment that Urz was here instead of on Palaven biting Reapers.

We found her in the armory. She taunted me about how she’d taken my ship, my name, my fingerprints… well, there were some things she hadn’t taken. She hadn’t taken my man. Or my squad. And there was no way she was going to fool the Council, let alone Hackett, and god forbid she try to have a conversation with Anderson. Still, she had a point about not shooting up my ship. Not quite as strong as my point about Conrad Verner being better at being me than she was.

She blew through medigel like it was unlimited. Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t. Of course, reckless me, we rolled together down the launch ramp for the shuttle. The shuttle that was out trying to kill a skycar that was blocking the FTL jump. Both of us ended up hanging off the edge. The clone asked why me and not her. The question was answered when Kaidan came sliding down to grab my hand, and Garrus was right behind him holding his foot so the combined weight made sure we stayed on. Brooks? Barely looked conflicted or apologetic when she turned away.

Of course, it wasn’t the clone’s fault she didn’t get it. Once my guys had gotten me to safety, I tried to save her, but she let go. She didn’t have an answer to what she had to live for. Even now, I do. And I was surrounded by them when I brought the Normandy home. Brooks broke her cuffs and tried to goad me into saying I’d miss her hero-worshiping fawning ways. I shot her in the back as she tried to run. At that range? I don’t miss.

Joker suggested throwing a party. It’s apparently what one does after killing their evil clone. Shore leave was obviously still a go, so I figured why the hell not? Not until I’d had a chance to make some preparations, of course. It seemed like a good way to end our shore leave, actually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know. It's short. Didn't seem right to combine it with the upcoming hijinks, though.


	69. Shore Leave Hijinks, Part 1

Shore leave itself, a lot of my crew wanted a chance to hang out, as did some old friends. I was supposed to meet Traynor for lunch, but she’d entered a Kepesh-Yakshi tournament and was doing well. I watched as she kicked the ass of an old rival. She won the tournament, but we never did get lunch. Zaeed was at the arcade, too. I helped him win a prize from the claw machine. It was, frankly, embarrassing for him.

Met up with Garrus for drinks. Probably shouldn’t have done that on an empty stomach, but what the hell, right? Being drunk is the only excuse I can think of for taking the bet that Garrus could actually make me dance without looking like an idiot. Turns out, Garrus is a damn good dancer. And that paparazzi love casinos. I woke up the next morning to a few messages that were decidedly not happy. Kaidan was more upset about the news articles than me actually dancing with Garrus. Tali wasn’t happy about me dancing with Garrus. Hackett wondered what the hell I was thinking, being seen out with two different members of my crew in less than a week.

I shoved it out of my mind and went to meet up with Javik. He’d gotten a proposal he wanted my help with. This turned out to be a turn in the most recent Blasto movie. It was exactly what I needed, a hilarious disaster that had me laughing as I went back to deal with my friends. I'd never really appreciated Javik's sense of humor until I heard him say "This one wishes he were still frozen in the refrigerator." I called Kaidan to apologize. He admitted he thought it was kind of hilarious, but doing it in such a public place was kind of a bad idea. Also, he’d spent the morning trying to convince Tali I was no threat to her. Calling Tali to apologize was harder. She didn’t want to listen until I swore to her that I supported a relationship between her and Garrus, that I was perfectly happy with Kaidan and that yes, I thought Garrus felt the same way about her that she did about him.

Hackett I didn’t bother responding to. Because the easily-explained one, I didn’t want to explain away, and I didn’t know how to explain the other.

James had something he wanted to show me, so I called him over. I’d known he’d gotten an N7 tattoo, but I’d never actually seen the finished thing. Looked good on him. He told me about growing up, and how he missed his home. Also how he’d stopped fraternizing when he joined the military – although, obviously, not flirting. I was a little surprised when he asked me what I thought about fraternizing.

“Uh… Kaidan?”

“Yeah, well, you two are Spectres, kind of a special case there. You wouldn’t be the first CO to enforce standards they didn’t follow themselves, Loco.”

“I’ve been around ships all my life, James. Kaidan’s the only time I’ve indulged personally, but fraternization happens all the time. As long as people keep their personal lives and their jobs separated, I don’t see the harm. Why do you ask, anyway?”

“Because, uh, maybe I’m thinking about changing my policy. Maybe I found someone worth takin’ that risk for.”

“Honestly, with the war? I say take whatever happiness you can find, as long as you keep living up to that shiny new tattoo on your back. This is no time to wait and see.”

“Yeah. I’ll think about it, Loco. Thanks. Anyway, I gotta get back to the Normandy… Esteban wants my help fixing up the shuttle after what those merc assholes did to it.” He started to go… but then he found the punching bag. Figured I’d work out with him a little, started doing some pull-ups. He challenged me to beat his record of 182. I did. Thank god I had a hot tub going upstairs.

“Hey, Kaidan. Got plans tonight?”

“No, why?”

“I let James goad me into a pull-up contest. I’m spending the evening in the hot tub. Thought you might like to join me.”

“I’ll grab some food and whiskey and be over soon. James still there?”

“Yeah,” I raised my voice, “although he said he was leaving an hour ago to help Cortez fix up the shuttle!”

“Oh shit, forgot about that. Headin’ out, Loco!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah. Garrus's friends date didn't make sense because Shepard wouldn't do that to Tali, so I played with the romance date instead.
> 
> Also, Vega asking Shepard what she thinks about fraternizing makes no bloody sense if she's with one of her crew, but ESPECIALLY Kaidan or Traynor (or Ashley or Cortez for a male Shepard). Because it's pretty obvious in that case.


	70. Continued Shenanigans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continued shenanigans with Miranda and Tali.

The next day, as I expected, I was sore as hell. Could barely lift my arms. Miranda wanted to see the new place, so I invited her over after lunch.

“What brings you back to the Citadel?” I asked as I poured us some drinks.

Miranda took the drink. “Heard some strange rumors about you, had to come see for myself what was going on. For example, heard you’d gotten a place in one of the posh districts. That just sounded weird. Not like you.”

“Ha! Wasn’t exactly my choice, my old mentor gave it to me.”

“Just doesn’t seem like your type of district,” Miranda said. “But then there were other things. Worse things. So… a clone?”

If anyone would have answers for me, it was Miranda. If I'd know she was here, I'd have called her in the second I knew it was a clone of me. “You know something about this?”

“Sort of… growing a clone for spare parts was suggested to me, but I vetoed and said we’d clone only the parts we needed as they came up, specifically to prevent a clone waking up and thinking they were you. We needed the real Shepard, not some cheap knockoff. But Brooks… I saw her at that casino party. I knew her as Hope Lilium, which I’m sure was also a lie. She put together the dossiers for you.”

“She mentioned that.”

“I mean, really. A clone? The universe would never survive two Shepards. Think of the property damage!” Miranda took her drink over to the window. “Aw, they shut down my favorite sushi place.”

“Uh… yeah, that was my fault." That wasn't fair. "My clone’s fault. Her hired goons shot up the fish tank so I’d fall through. First step in a plan to take my whole life.”

“Seriously? Why would she want your life? Why would anyone? Running all over the place, getting shot at every day…”

“Well, I love it. It’s not normal, it’s crazy, but it’s exhilarating. And there are benefits to all the adventure.” And the clone was me, so it made sense that if anyone would want my life, it would be her. The problem was that she didn't want the best parts of it.

“Speaking of clones… how do I know you’re the real Shepard?”

“Do you know how many times Kaidan’s asked me that because of your work? You of all people should know me.”

“It’s not like I carved my initials in the corner,” Miranda teased.

“Which I am grateful for, because I don’t know how I’d have explained _that_ to Kaidan. But seriously… I’m the real Shepard because I’m the only Shepard. No pale imitation is going to beat the real thing.”

“Good point. I’m stuck with you, then.”

Miranda left after a couple hours of catching up, explaining the work she was doing for the war. Oriana was safe, which was good to hear.

I called Tali and invited her for dinner. Afterwards, she found out I’d never seen Fleet and Flotilla. It didn’t take long into the vid to understand why she was so interested in it. It was the love story of a turian soldier and a quarian girl on her Pilgrimage. She’d watched it all the time growing up. I thought it was ridiculous, but Tali obviously loved it.

“So what ends up happening to them?” I asked when it was over. “Seems like a real downer of an ending.”

“Well, the fans have written all kinds of stories. Some of them find a way for love to conquer all, some of them have Shalei move on and get married so that she can reproduce and contribute to her people, but she never really loves her husband. Bellicus sometimes moves on, sometimes stays loyal to Shalei for the rest of his life even though they can never be together. And then they find each other in the afterlife, where there is no turian military or quarian fleet, and they get their happy ending there.”

“What’s your take on it, then?”

“I… I don’t know. I used to be one of the love conquers all fans, but now… as much as Bellicus loves Shalei, I don’t know that they could make it work. He’s addicted to the thrill of combat, and her idea of fighting is shouting at each other about whether to fix up a ship or cannibalize it for parts for the other ships in the flotilla.”

“Huh.”

“It doesn’t make what they have less valuable for the time they had it. Neither of them will ever love another person the way they love each other.”

“Yeah, I definitely get that. Shalei settling for reproduction, I can see, but I don’t see Bellicus ever settling for what he can get. For all his reputation as a hothead, he’s got a strong sense of honor and loyalty, and once he commits to something, he’s completely in.”


	71. More Shenanigans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More shenanigans.

Next day, EDI wanted to participate in some human bonding rituals. She planned on shopping, but she didn’t want to go out to the stores, just order things online. I had to stop her from buying Joker a car, suggesting a rental instead. The ring she bought me was nice, although explaining it to Kaidan was going to be a little awkward. We spent most of the afternoon picking out gifts for our friends. The hardest one was Javik. What the hell do you buy someone whose entire culture has been gone for fifty thousand years? I thought about buying him the Blasto movies, but we ended up going with some actually decent vids instead.

That evening, I met Cortez in the shuttle. He wanted to take me for a flight, show off a little. Show me what it was like without the inertial dampeners. It was a blast. He gave me some history of flying lessons, and told me that as much as he loved fighters, he loved being my shuttle pilot more.

I swear, the plan was to call Kaidan when I got home. I was pretty sure I’d seen some photographers hanging around the shuttle port. But I had a message from C-Sec. Grunt had gotten himself in trouble and called me to bail him out. The story was hilarious enough that I ended up not minding. His buddies broke him out of the hospital, got him drunk, they climbed on the krogan statue, set a C-Sec car on fire, stole the flaming C-Sec car, and then Grunt was hungry so he stopped for noodles. The noodles were apparently a little spicy. I had this sudden feeling like I had a krogan son. When had that happened?

Got home just in time to see my screen blinking. Kaidan had seen the pictures and wanted to make sure it was just hanging out with Cortez, not rushing off to some emergency without him and Garrus.

“You know, most guys would start getting a little paranoid by now.”

“Most guys aren’t me, and they’re not dating you. I told you I’d never doubt you again, not about anything big like this. I meant it.”

“I love you too, Kaidan.”

I took the morning off, and met Jacob at the arcade after lunch. He was supervising a trip out for a bunch of kids with MIA parents. Thought that was awesome of him, but not awesome enough to just let him kick my ass at Shattered Eezo in front of witnesses. I would have, but he started the trash talk. After that, he was going down.

Cortez and Vega had discovered a biotiball game. I was vaguely familiar with the sport, and they did have a point about my apartment having a sweet new vidscreen. So, what the hell, right? I called them over. Thanks to Vega forgetting the beer, they were running a little late. They didn’t have much time to explain things to me before asking me to predict the winner. I went with the human team. James asked if that was because I was more likely to end up attracted to the players. I smacked him on the head. Although apparently this was how both Cortez and Vega had chosen their teams.

Cortez was pretty laid back, but James got really into things, shouting at the refs, the players, and on one memorable occasion cussing out the court after one of the Maestros lost her biotic field and hit her head on the ground when she fell. I thought it was more entertaining than the actual game. Maybe after the war I’d pay more attention. Definitely going to watch more if I can get James to come over and watch with me, so I can see him get excited and lose his shit again.

The Sorcerers won, and Cortez gleefully told James to pay up. I was mildly upset about not being let in on the betting until they explained the bet was whether I’d pick the winner. Both of them thought I’d pick the human team, and Cortez had the sense not to bet against me.

The next day, Traynor came over with the intent of making up our lunch that had gotten hijacked by Kepesh-Yakshi. This one ended up hijacked by the hot tub. Should’ve expected that. I had no idea what Traynor was talking about when she started talking about bath supplies. I’m military. I don’t know how to do the girly thing.

That evening, Liara came over. Things I didn’t know about her: she could play piano. Turns out this is because she knows exactly one song. She’d learned it on a dig when there was a dust storm so bad they were trapped and she got bored and restless. I could sympathize; I didn’t like being kept from work, either. I managed to get Liara to take enough of a break to teach me the song, and then she brought some of her work over to the apartment.


	72. A Break in the Shenanigans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thane's memorial and a chat with Hannah Shepard.

It was unexpected when Kolyat contacted me. The Council wanted to hold a memorial service for Thane. He’d been dead for a while, but I suppose things had been busy. But I agreed to host it and to speak for Thane. I focused on how despite his dark path, he was a good man, and one who had given his life for others despite having every reason to hide. Garrus talked about the difference between an assassin and a friend, and made it clear which Thane was. Joker admired that you always knew where you stood with him. EDI surprised me, talking about his lack of humor masking the effort it was taking him to turn his life around. Kaidan talked about how, at the end of his life, he still found a way to serve others over himself. Samara reminded us that he’d given up his own form of redemption to keep his son from needing redemption of his own. Kolyat hadn’t wanted to speak, but in the end, he did. He intended to use this opportunity to ask the salarian councilor to help a salarian group that was researching Kepral Syndrome. I offered help if he needed it.

Once everyone else had left, Kaidan stayed behind to help me clean up. Not that there was much to do, really, but it had been a kind of emotional experience and I was grateful for the company. Thane had tried to contact me. I don’t know if it’s because of his history or because of my stubbornness that the messages didn’t get through, but Kolyat had saved them from his omnitool and gave them to me to listen to now.

I woke up in the morning to an email from my mother. Saying to call her. Uhoh. It turned out she just wanted to say she was proud of me and that she thought of me frequently.

“Hon, do you remember those bedtime stories we used to make up together?”

“The ones where I was in charge of my own ship, had a loyal crew, and always arrived just in time to save the day from the bad guys?” I hadn't thought of them in years, but yes, I remembered them.

“Yes, those. I found one of them stored on an old datapad, and it made me smile. Even then, you knew what life would bring you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure that if the turians factored in, they were bad guys, not my inseparable best friend.”

“True! But you did have the dashing first officer who always had your back.”

“Mom, is that a question?”

“No, no, I’m just saying how cute it is that you knew what you’d grow into. My daughter, the savior of the galaxy. I’m proud of you.”

“You said that already.”

“Just hush, I’m your mother.”

“Any word on Dad?”

“His ship went to rescue some civilians. They haven’t checked in. It was only three days ago, though, so don’t worry about it too much, hon.”

“Thanks. Is Emma Alenko still on your crew?”

“Yes, why?”

“Would you be willing to pass on a message that her brother Kaidan is alive and well and out here kicking ass?”

“Of course. If Kaidan’s half the soldier Emma is…”

“Mom, you’ve met Kaidan. He was on the old Normandy, and you knew that because you asked him about me. And you can’t have missed his induction as a Spectre!”

“Oh, right. Him. Obviously competence runs in the family. Emma’s one of the best I’ve ever worked with.”

“Ever wish I had siblings?”

“I don’t know what the universe would do with more of you, hon. One is about all the galaxy can handle.”

“So I shouldn’t have kids…?”

“It’s up to you, sweetie. Just remember what your life was like, and think hard about if you want that for your child or if you can deal with being away for months at a time.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Mom.”

“I should go, but it was great talking to you, hon. Good luck out there.”

“Thanks, Mom. You too. When Dad gets back tell him I love him.” When the line shut off, I called out, “You can come out now, Kaidan. I know you were listening.”

“Thanks for asking about Emma. Still no word on Dad, you know. Sorry to hear that yours has gone missing.”

“He’ll probably turn up. Three days isn’t that long to be out of contact. And if he doesn’t, well… giving his life to save civilians is how he’d want to go.”

“Yeah, my dad would never complain about dying trying to save the Earth, doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to hope he makes it. What’s your plan for tonight?”

“Miranda wants to meet up at the casino, see if we can figure out this normal girl thing.”

“Good luck. James challenged Garrus to a competition at Armax, and I told Garrus I’d be on his team. It’s us and Tali against James, Steve, and Liara.”

“Tell Garrus to kick James’s ass. And then kick his for not inviting me!”

“Heh. Part of James’s challenge, actually. He could have one or the other of us but not both. If you were available Liara was going to bow out and watch. I’d let you choose which team you were on and then do everything in my power to kick your ass.”

“Good thing I’m going with Miranda then, there is no good outcome to us being on opposite teams. I look forward to hearing about this.”

I met up with Miranda at the casino. She looked great, but it was pretty obvious she was floundering as to what to actually do with herself now that she had some time to just be normal. I could see my future if I chose to retire after the war. We ended up getting drunk on wine, which was kind of a new experience, usually it’s beer or whiskey. Did a fair bit of gambling. Went upstairs and danced a little. Well, Miranda danced. I… hung out on the dance floor moving around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, sorry about the break there!


	73. That Stupid Arena

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard goes to check out the arena. Things go badly. She then has date night with Kaidan.

I think I needed the afternoon meditating with Samara the next day. No hangover, just the feeling of what the hell did I do. I teased her over an account of her exploits, and she had plenty of ammunition to get me back with. Magazines are awful.

Afterwards, Kaidan came by to tell me about the Arena. As expected, Garrus won, although James held his own well. He’d been thinking about heading back, when I could come. We called Garrus, who insisted on bringing Tali, and somehow it turned into pretty much everyone showing up, except EDI and Joker. Hell, even Zaeed dropped in. He and Kaidan didn’t get along very well when I took them both Cerberus hunting.

Somehow, this ended up being a whole thing. People kept contacting me, with special requests for fights they wanted to see. Me soloing Reapers, Javik fighting Reapers, blowing up geth… it got a little silly with the hanar that accused me of cheating and told me to go in without medigel.

Jack didn’t get a chance to play with us, so she asked me back the next afternoon. Just me. We had a great time, and then I called Garrus and Kaidan and we kept playing. Until we broke the scoreboard. Kaidan told me that next time I chose Mirror Match, he was leaving me to it. To be fair, it never said they’d all look like me! And then, we got into testing some things for the arena. And ended up in a match with the safeties off. Kaidan was _not_ happy. We survived, but that was a ridiculous fight – Praetorians, banshees, Geth primes, and Atlas mechs? All at once in the final wave.

After that, we were pretty well done with the arena. We didn’t have that much more shore leave left, and I’d already had more than my fair share of attempts on my life. Maybe after the war we could go back? Well, that’s what I thought then, anyway. Now… not so sure.

Jack came over the next morning. She brought her varren, Eezo. He’d been abused and abandoned, but she found him at a rescue shelter, and figured with some help he’d turn out to be a good guy. According to her, Eezo was a big softy. Well, I wasn’t about to point out the obvious.

I hit the casino after lunch. Joker was there trying to get free drinks by telling people how he’d saved the Citadel during the Cerberus coup. What the hell, why not? He’s certainly done enough for the Citadel. On the way out, I saw a weird device. Kasumi was hitting the casino. Heh.

Kaidan finally claimed his share of my time that evening. I’d thought the plan was to go out to the strip, but Kaidan had one more talent that I’d never really had the opportunity to see. The man can cook. At least, when he’s not being distracted by his girlfriend.

“You like to cook, Shepard?”

“Don’t know that I’d say I like to, but I can. Roommate at Arcturus taught me, said eating Alliance crap 24/7 is bad for morale. You’re going to laugh at me, but honestly, ration packs and protein paste are comfort food for me.”

“Not laughing. You grew up on ships and stations. Comfort food is usually whatever you ate as a kid, well, I’m guessing you ate a lot of rations.”

“Yep. What about you? Where’d you learn to cook?”

“Classes at Jump Zero, actually. A biotic who can’t cook for himself risks starving to death.”

“Ugh, I swear, that was the worst. The biotic hunger kicked in right about the time I started basic training. It took forever to realize it was because of the biotics, and that I needed to register so I could get upped to the biotic requisitions. You should’ve seen me then… wait, no, you shouldn’t.”

“That would’ve been right around the time I landed on Illium. I sure wasn’t much to look at either, then. Underfed biotic who’d been letting the mass effect fields do most of the heavy lifting, so I was burning a ton of calories without really putting on any muscle at all. Illium helped, steady work meant I wasn’t constantly starving.”

“Speaking of… you’re burning the garlic.”

“Shit! Thanks. Guess I’m a little distracted.”

“Oh really? By what?”

“I can’t imagine,” Kaidan teased with a smile as I wrapped my arm around his shoulder.

Any doubts I had were smothered when Kaidan set our food on the table. It was one of the best meals I’d ever had. There are probably some people who’d laugh at me for that, who’d say the food was seasoned with love. Maybe they’re right. I don’t care. I pigged out on it. I then made Kaidan help me burn off the calories.

Great night.


	74. One Last Hurrah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard hosts the promised party. Things get a little weird. Then weirder. But overall, Good Times Were Had By All.

I think Kaidan will forgive me for saying the next night was better, though. We had two more nights of shore leave, so I figured it was time for the party I’d promised. After all, I was planning on things getting a little wild, so we’d want a day to recover from that. And by wild I don’t mean getting shot at or kidnapped or anything like that, not this time. I mean I hope my neighbors were understanding… or that the soundproofing was really good.

I swear, ten minutes into the party and Tali was drunk. Garrus was keeping an eye on her, I hope, or this night could get really weird. For how long she’d been on the Normandy, Traynor was still surprisingly nervous. Didn’t she get that these were her friends, too? She did pass on a message that Chakwas couldn’t come, medical emergency. Disappointing.

I have to say, I was terrified when I found Wrex, Grunt, Zaeed, and Javik hanging out together. Those four could probably trash the place in twenty seconds. I didn’t want things getting that crazy. I broke up a fight between Wrex and Grunt. Friendly, but even in friendly matches, I’d probably have to replace most of the furniture. Javik warned me about an invisible Kasumi. I didn’t need the warning, since she uncloaked to comment that stealing the Normandy sounded like fun when Traynor asked about it.

Joker was reminiscing about how Cerberus used to be hilariously incompetent. He recalled all the missions we went on that turned out to be Cerberus running some kind of experiment that got loose and killed their guys. Miranda pointed out that the Lazarus project had been a huge success. I took great pride in pointing out that I had gotten loose and started killing their guys. EDI reminded us that she was also a Cerberus project. Once again… she got loose, and now she was killing their guys. Sucks to be Cerberus.

“Party” Vega approved of my choice of music. For a guy who comes up with so many nicknames, he sure had a terrible one back in school. He wanted to see what happens when a biotic got drunk. Well, I was pretty sure that between me, Jack, Kaidan, Jacob, Liara, and Miranda… at least one of us would. Not Samara, though. The krogan… well, I did have some ryncol I hadn’t set out yet. Who knew if I’d remember.

So Kaidan liked the place, except that he’d rather have one like it on Earth looking out over the Pacific. Well, after the war, I’d have to see what I could do. Especially if Anderson wanted this one back. Well, Anderson wouldn’t, I was pretty sure now. But it’s gotta be busted up pretty bad.

Glyph cranked up the music. I needed more alcohol when I found Zaeed flirting with Samara. He wasn’t going to get anywhere, but holy hell. Zaeed and art were a thing that actually went together.

Someone thought it was a good idea to let Jack and Miranda be alone in the study. I had to go make sure nobody was killing anyone. Of course, being somewhat drunk myself… well, suggesting they make out was probably not the best idea I’ve ever had.

Joker found himself surrounded by Javik, Wrex, Garrus, and Cortez. And somehow, Cortez was the one insisting on Joker doing some target practice. What the hell. Incidentally, the worst planet to get shot down over is Eletania. Those damn spore things.

Cortez was drunk enough to want to see me dancing. And this was before he agreed to match Joker shot for shot, so that Joker would go shooting with him the next day. Of course, Joker pulled out this terrible drink that had Cortez giving up after two shots.

Grunt had taken it upon himself to be the doorman. He was truly excellent at pressing the button and saying no. I commended him for his work and told him to keep it up. I’m all for wild parties, but I was liking the fact that everyone here knew each other so they had incentives to avoid too-awkward morning afters.

I found Tali. Unfortunately Garrus was busy trying to get Joker to learn to shoot, so Tali was caught in the middle of an awkward conversation with Traynor and EDI about Traynor’s crush on EDI’s voice. Not my thing, but I totally got the descriptions I was hearing. Tali, of course, was so mortified that she ate levo cheese. She’s fine, the suit was able to purge it before she got sick, but I thought that was a little extreme.

And then… I found James. Telling Liara, Kaidan, and Jacob that biotics aren’t that impressive. “Look. Biotics are strong, but unpredictable. All that cooling down…”

I had to jump in. “I’m unpredictable. My biotics work exactly as I tell them to. Just ask the Reapers.”

James shrugged. “Okay, maybe. But biotics are what they are. Whereas you can always improve your physical conditioning. And what about our poor comrades with flawed implants?”

Kaidan actually took offense at that. “You’re not talking about me, are you? Sure the migraines are annoying, but I’ve worked my ass off and improved my biotics. Now I can reave.”

“Seriously?” Jacob asked.

Liara looked surprised. “That is a little unusual…”

“Far as I know I’m the only human biotic who can. I’m sure I’m the only L2.”

“Look, that’s nice, but there’s still the cooldown factor. Whereas, me, the hotter the better. Hey, Liara? Come on, don’t be shy," James said.

“We are still talking about combat, right?” Kaidan said with a shake of his head.

“You know, it’s hard to argue when there’s a specimen of such physical excellence right here,” I said, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

“Thank you, Commander!” James said, flexing.

“Wow, Shepard. Did you really just say that?” Kaidan asked.

“Yep. ‘Course, I wasn’t talking about James.” I went over and threw an arm around Kaidan. “I got my specimen right here. Of course, my specimen of physical excellence happens to also be biotic…”

Liara facepalmed. “Goddess. If that’s really how you feel…”

“Nah. James. Physical conditioning is great, and it’s something every soldier should have. Biotics are special. They make an already strong soldier a force to make even a Reaper soil its pants.” I paused for a minute. “Do reapers even wear pants? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Reaper wearing anything. Except the marauders, they wear armor…”

“Ooookay, I think Shepard’s starting to get drunk,” Jacob said. “Not something I’ve seen often.”

“The hell are you talking about, Jacob? I drank a lot during team-building!”

“Yeah. And you hold your liquor better than most people I’ve ever known. Full-on Drunk Shepard is something I’m not used to seeing.”

“Yeah, well, it’s nice having a group of people like this I can trust to actually get drunk around. Even if they aren’t exactly the brightest about picking their fights, James.”

“Another point in favor of biotics, Muscles,” Kaidan said. “The four of us? Mild hangovers if any. If hangovers are anything like my migraines, you are going to be praying for death in the morning.”

“Whatever you say, Azure. I’m drinkin’ my water, too.”

I felt the slight tensing from Kaidan. “James… you do know Kaidan spent some time on Illium when he was a little younger than you?”

Liara looked startled. “Oh, Goddess. I thought he just meant the biotics. And the armor.”

“Say, did you ever throw people around when you were kids?” James said. Expert subject change.

“People?” Liara sounded horrified.

James grinned. Distraction successful. “Yeah! People, furniture, small objects, pets… whatever.”

“No! Why would I?” Liara was still horrified.

“Oh yeah. All the time,” Jacob said.

“I drove my parents and sisters crazy with it,” Kaidan said. “Scared the hell out of my parents, too, since at that time human biotics were still so new…”

“I probably would have if I could,” I said. “Luckily for my parents I got exposed later. Can’t imagine the ship captains would’ve let me stay, as it was I limited the assignments they could get.”

Glyph started blasting music. I found Wrex, Javik, and Zaeed holding some kind of war game in the bar. At least they were shooting empties. And with nineteen people, the amount of empties we’d racked up wasn’t _that_ alarming.

EDI wanted to dance. Joker wouldn’t dance with her. I offered, but Joker spent a solid two minutes laughing at the idea. The whole idea of the party was to blow off steam, and Joker wasn’t going to hurt himself too badly, not with EDI’s help.

Kasumi going through my underwear drawer was rather disturbing.

Tali was a surprisingly good dancer. Traynor was drunk enough that her enthusiasm overwhelmed whatever skill she might have had. It was quite surprising to see Samara dancing, even though I knew perfectly well she’d been a dancer when she was a maiden. I was drunk enough to join in. Not drunk enough to forget Garrus saying they should record me so the Reapers could watch, because they’d either run away, laugh themselves to death, or fall in love.

Don’t ask me how a dance floor turns into a competition to recite the elements. Leave it to Jack to cut things off at thulium, though. And to Tali to not know why. And to Garrus to actually know that one and come out with it.

I got upstairs just in time to hear James asking of any of my biotic friends had the cojones to actually throw him off the balcony. Kaidan was still there, and still pissed at him for earlier. Thankfully it was Liara who actually picked him up. At first, James seemed to be enjoying it, but I think he got a little scared when Kaidan asked for a turn because Liara was being so gentle.

I seemed to have lost my doorman. I eventually found him in the shower upstairs. His drunken sleep ramblings were entertaining. For example, he’s sad hanar can’t wear sweaters. SHARKS!

Final event for the evening was to get a picture of everyone. Probably should’ve done that before half of us were so drunk we weren’t able to look properly at what we were trying to look at.

 

I was starting to get used to waking up in Kaidan’s arms. Still a very pleasant experience, especially when the first thing he does once he realizes I’m conscious again is to hold me down and kiss me. I wished out loud we could stay there like that all day. Of course, we couldn’t. We had to clean up. And I could smell something incredibly delicious downstairs, so I declared that we had to investigate. Kaidan seemed to agree with that.

Mordin had a friend from STG smuggle a datapad into my apartment where I couldn’t miss it. Man, STG was good. If it was Kirrahe… I wish he’d come earlier and joined the party.

I was going to be doing a lot of laundry. Kaidan and I weren’t the only ones who hooked up the night before. Tali was having trouble getting out of bed, and only part of that was hangover. Still, she said it was all totally worth it, but she was just going to stay there forever, thanks. Getting up was too much work. James was cooking breakfast and Miranda had made tea. Those were the heavenly smells. Mmmmm. James had talked about his grandmother’s huevos before, but I hadn’t been brave enough to try them then. This time, though... I hope his grandmother survived the war.

I don’t want to know how long Javik had been on my bathroom floor. He was entertainingly disoriented, and apparently he has a thing for Liara. Interesting.

It may have started badly, but damn if shore leave hadn’t turned out great. But our time was up, and Hackett had notified me that the Crucible was as ready as it could be, so it was time for us to go work our magic and finish off Cerberus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to serious plottening after this. Hope y'all enjoyed the trip through the Citadel DLC (aka the Best Thing Ever).


	75. Night Before The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard has one more night before running full-tilt into Hell.

I had so many datapads spread across my quarters I was going crazy. Everything looked good, but I kept wondering what I was missing, what I could do to improve our chances, if there was a way to help. Kaidan came up to see me, with the bottle of whiskey I’d given him in the hospital. “What with the coup and all, we never did get around to drinking this. You’re gonna drive yourself nuts, and how’s that going to help anything?”

“Kaidan… I need to…”

“No, you don’t. You’ve done everything you could.”

“Have I? I’ve run the numbers again and again, and I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something.”

“You’re missing that being exhausted and running numbers in her head isn’t what Commander Shepard needs to be when we get to the base. We need her focused, at the top of her game. You’ve got yourself surrounded by one hell of a crew. Trust them to get this done. What you’ve done since the Reapers arrived… it’s more than anyone could have expected when we left Earth. Even Anderson and Hackett never expected what you’ve done out here.”

“But what if…”

“No. Shepard, these last few years… we’ve had some good times. We’ve had some hard times. And no matter what happens, I’ll never forget them.”

“Yeah… god, this feels like the night before Ilos, doesn’t it? Left to myself I’d have driven myself crazy, but you came in and saved me from myself. Before the Collector base, Garrus gathered whoever was left on the ship and we all kinda shot the shit together. It was good, but… I liked Ilos better.”

“Yeah, it was… pretty spectacular, I believe were your exact words,” Kaidan teased.

“Hope you don’t mind wasting the rest of that bottle.”

“That’s what caps are for. We’ll use the rest of it to celebrate the end of the Reapers.”

“Good.” I climbed into Kaidan’s lap. “I can’t tell you how much this… how much you mean to me. I love you, Kaidan.”

“I’ve always loved you. Through Saren and the geth, through Alchera, Horizon, Reapers… even when I was being a total idiot, I still loved you.”

“Yeah. Hardest part of Aratoht was… in the past. I think we’ve got better things to do than reminisce about crap.”

Once again, I had the dream of the little boy running through the woods. I hadn’t had it for a while, so it was kind of a sucker punch to hear Kelly, Thane, and Legion for the first time, in addition to Mordin and Ash. And this time, when the kid burned… I was there, holding him, burning with him. It shocked me awake.

This was one secret I’d kept from Kaidan. After all, I hadn’t had the dreams since he came back to the Normandy. I told him everything now. “Kaidan… are we going to make it?”

“I don’t know. I know we have a better chance now than we had when we left Earth. You’ve done some miraculous things out here, but there’s a clear pattern. You’ve convinced the galaxy to unite. And you’ve done that by spreading hope everywhere you went.”

“Sometimes…” I trailed off. “Kaidan, I…”

“Hey. I was talking to Javik the other day. He doesn’t know that the Prothean fleet was ever as strong as the one we’ve got united under Hackett. We’ve got the Crucible, all but one part, and we’re getting that today. The other thing you’ve given us is a fighting chance.”

“And give us hope and a fighting chance… the Reapers better watch out, huh?” But Kaidan was right. Sure, we could’ve been stronger if things had gone differently, but pretty much every resource, every ship left in the galaxy was aimed at Cerberus and the Reapers. If that didn’t give us a chance, then there never was any real hope to be had.


	76. Ding Dong The Witch is Dead!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard blows Cerberus to Hell. Finally. No time to rest, so she takes the Normandy back to Earth.

EDI explained why she should come to the base with us. I couldn’t argue – we probably would need her knowledge of Cerberus. Joker didn’t like it. I made him a deal – I’d bring EDI back in good condition, if he’d promise me the Normandy would be in good condition to come back to.

Cortez crashlanded us in the hangar, where Cerberus and some mechs were waiting. EDI proved invaluable when she shut down their attempts to vent the hangar, and then when she came up with the plan of running one of their empty fighters through the doors so we could get in.

We had some time while EDI opened doors, so I watched some logs on Project Lazarus. Miranda had told me I was brain dead, but I don’t think I’d really believed her. Hearing Wilson reporting to Tim, well… “I hadn’t realized it was quite that bad.”

“I thought you were just on life support. Do you… were you… never mind, I don’t think I want to know.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m me, or I wouldn’t be here destroying Cerberus’s base. But what if I’m AI, or a really good VI?”

“You’re real enough for me.”

Hearing that from Kaidan… well, I’m pretty sure VIs aren’t capable of the kind of emotions that triggered. And then hearing Tim brush away concerns that I’d never work for them, to have Kaidan be the one reminding me I did what I had to do… after everything we’d been through because of those choices, well, it meant more than I can say. He picked my crew not just because they were good, but because they were people he thought I would trust. He was right. He miscalculated, though, not quite realizing the effect I would have on them.

The next set of logs were about EDI. Turns out she was the rogue VI from Luna, upgraded with Reaper code. She forgave me for trying to kill her, which was only fair since she’d tried to kill me. Tim had also been warned how persuasive she was and what could happen, but dismissed it. Another miscalculation. I’d always wondered why Cerberus never tried to take the Normandy back. Turns out, they had. EDI fought back. With porn. Joker was a terrible influence on her.

They’d recovered the embryonic Reaper. What the hell for, I don’t know. How, I don’t know. Don’t much care. They were using the parts, which meant we could do the same with the Crucible. Using the heart as a power source… if our scientists could get it in quick enough, it seemed right.

Tim was gone when we got to the central lab, but the VI was still there. I tried once again to reason with Tim – because we were talking over holo, so shooting him was pointless – but it didn’t work. We got what we needed, and we got to face Kai Leng again. This time, we killed that bastard.

So, it turns out, the Catalyst is the Citadel. And Tim knew that, and had passed the message to the Reapers. What the hell was he thinking? Right, indoctrinated, but still! The Reapers got control of the Citadel and closed it up tight so we couldn’t use it. And then, they moved it to Sol. To Earth. I had to warn Hackett. This was going to be one interesting battle.

Anderson called and I let him know what was up. He promised to scout out whatever was happening in London and pass the intel to Hackett so we could cobble up whatever desperate plan we could. That plan was pretty damn desperate. The fleet was divided into two: Sword Fleet to punch holes in the Reaper’s defenses, and Shield Fleet to protect the Crucible. Ground forces were gathered into Hammer. I’d go in first with the vanguard and take down the cannons so that the rest of Hammer could land, and then we’d make a push for the beam to the Citadel. We needed to get the arms open so we could dock the Crucible.

Hackett gave the inspirational speech. I was so grateful not to have to do that this time.

I’d only ever seen the battle for the Citadel in vids, seeing as I was kind of in the middle of my own fight at the time. It was the only thing I could think of that could have prepared me for watching our combined galactic fleet open fire on the Reapers. If it could. That was… that was an incredibly impressive sight.

I couldn’t stay to watch, though. I had a job to do. Steve got us down, just in time for us to watch a Reaper blow the cannon-killing team out. We had to improvise the emergency backup plan where we did it instead. We watched Steve’s shuttle go down; I hoped he’d made it. We took out the last cannon, and survived while an extraction shuttle got to us – with Anderson.

No offense to Major Coats, he seemed like a pretty cool guy, but I’d known Anderson for a really long time. I was so grateful to see him. Fortunately, Major Coats got it; he knew it was thanks to Anderson that there was a resistance left to fight back. But they were exhausted and a lot of them were dead; Hammer had to carry the ground fight. We could do that.


	77. The End, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard makes her final plans and says her goodbyes to the team. It hurts like hell.

Not as much of Hammer made it as we’d have liked. It had to be enough to get the job done, though. I moved around the Forward Operating Base, letting the troops see me and trying to keep it together as I checked in with my friends. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it, but I found my squadmates and said goodbye. The ones who weren’t at the base, I called. I just… I had this sense, that we all knew the cost would be high. I didn’t know which of my squad would be the ones who paid it. Could be me.

You know, I can’t believe how much I’d come to like Zaeed. We were never on good terms, and I didn’t think we ever would be after Zorya. I guess that’s what happens when you go through hell together. The other calls were easier in a sense. The best was Steve; it was a good sign. He’d survived the crash.

I don’t know how I didn’t start crying talking to Kaidan. I knew it was going to be bad, that Kaidan knew as well as I did that chances were we didn’t both make it through this. It’s why we’d never jinxed things by making plans for after the war. But I couldn’t bring myself to admit it, and it helped to know that Kaidan was going to fight like hell to get through to hold me again. I told him I’d be waiting for him and that he’d better show up. Kaidan had a few regrets, but not many. I think we could both name them all. But it had been a good ride, for both of us. If this was the end… well, that’s why we’d made the call to stop wasting time.

Garrus thought this would be our last chance to say it was just like old times. He went on to explain: we were going to kick the Reapers back into whatever black hole they’d crawled out of, and it wouldn’t be just like old times without them hanging around and no one believing us about them. He was thinking about retiring. I… I didn’t know if I could, although warm tropics and vid royalties sounded pretty damn good right then. And unlike Mordin, running tests on seashells wouldn’t be enough for me. We made plans to meet up at the bar if we both ended up dead.

I’m not sure how much longer I can keep from going to find that bar. If I do manage to make it and Garrus is at the bar and Kaidan’s not gonna show up… I don’t even know what I’ll do. Go to Rannoch, maybe. I couldn’t face rebuilding Earth or Palaven, but if Tali survived, I could help her and the quarians... especially since they lost their geth support, thanks to me. Maybe I should go to Rannoch even if Kaidan and Garrus are alive.

Liara couldn’t think of anything to say, although she knew five minutes after I left she’d come up with something perfect. She did have a gift for me. An asari mind meld, a way of saying goodbye without actually having to say things. It was… I’m glad I didn’t react the way I usually had to such things, but it felt really different. Lying here now, I’m wondering just what, exactly, Liara had done. If she’d taken the chance…

Javik envied us. We’d made it farther than the Protheans had in their time. He’d been listening to Wrex rally his men, and couldn’t help thinking that there was no rallying cry, no focal point, for his own people. I think for the first time, he was admitting that while our cycle was different, maybe we had a point in those differences. Javik named me the avatar of victory, and told me every soul that had ever existed was watching me. He reminded me there would be difficult choices. Wasn’t that the truth. But I think the weirdest moment of the conversation came when Javik said that after this was over, he was thinking about traveling with Liara and writing a book together. Journeys with the Prothean.

Dextro or amino doesn’t seem to matter to asari. I wonder if they can work with four-stranded.

EDI wanted to know why I thought we could win. Eventually, I figured out the real problem – she was scared. She knew what we had to do and why, and that this was our best chance. She just wasn’t sure we could, and that had her afraid. She also thanked me. Cerberus created her, Joker freed her, but she gave me credit for giving her true life.

And not long later, I chose to take that life from her. I’m such an asshole.

As expected, only about half of Hammer made it. We couldn’t wait and hope for more, not without losing as many as we were gaining, so I made the call to start the push. I did end up making a speech, but it was only to my squad. We were going straight up the middle. Cortez would take most of them back to the Normandy after we got the Reaper down, but Kaidan and Garrus were coming with me, to the beam. To the Citadel.

Wait a minute. Ow, that hurts. Feels like my body is trying to rip itself apart. What…


	78. The End, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard makes it to the Citadel and finds herself faced with an impossible choice.

We pushed forward. Of course, it ended up being us who had to fire the missiles along our line. Should’ve seen that coming. There were so many Reapers, all over the place. It was terrible. As much as I love being right in the thick of battle… there wasn’t anywhere that wasn’t. The guidance on the missiles was being affected by the beam. Even with EDI’s help, we needed to pull the destroyer away. That was going to be one hell of a difficult fight. Banshees, brutes, Harvesters… but we did it. EDI got those missiles into the Reaper and took the bastard down.

We signaled Hackett that we were making our run for the beam. It was a straight shot, just a quick run. Of course, Hackett told us that several destroyers, led by Harbinger, were heading for us instead of fighting with Sword. I didn’t know whether to be more amused by the threat of Reapers running scared or terrified that more Reapers were inbound. 

Cortez had taken my squad members who weren’t coming. But he was still in range when I watched a Mako flip over and nearly take out Kaidan and Garrus. When Kaidan realized I didn’t mean to come with them to get the hell out of there, he didn’t take it well. I think, somehow, we both knew this was it. For real, this time. But we knew that he couldn’t make it to the beam, and I think everyone knew all along that if anyone did, it would be me. I had to keep going.

Then the Reaper weapon hit me. Oh, god. I don’t know how I survived that, other than sheer luck and stubbornness. I could hear Major Coats calling the retreat, believing we’d failed. That pissed me off enough to get up and pick up the nearest gun. My biotics weren’t working. It was me and a tiny pistol against whatever I found up on the Citadel – not that I wasn’t still having to shoot my way through Reapers on the ground.

I thought I’d been in pain before. What I felt when I heard Anderson calling me on the Citadel… it was a hundred times worse. But I had to keep moving. I was pissed off. I was scared. I’d had to say goodbye to Kaidan. I was not going to fail, not having made it this far.

Anderson and I met up at the central controls… but Tim was there, too. And he’d found a way to control us. Partially, anyway. I could feel the tentacles trying to slither in, but I was fighting. Anderson, too. I wasn’t strong enough, though. I couldn’t stop it when Tim made me shoot Anderson. But I could make it non-fatal. I couldn’t convince Tim to end this, to let us go. I was so close. I could feel it. I could shoot him, though. It wasn’t quite the end I’d always wanted for him, but it was an end.

I got the arms open and went to collapse by Anderson. We’d done it. Anderson said he was proud of me. But his wounds were too much. He let go then. I couldn’t. I’d made a promise. And then, Hackett called. The Crucible wasn’t doing anything. I was too weak to do much of anything, but I tried to make my way to the control panel.

The next thing I knew, I was staring at a ghostly version of that little boy I’d watched die. He told me that the Reapers were his, that the Citadel was his home. He confirmed Leviathan’s tale: he had been created to solve the problem of synthetics turning on their organic creators. He believed that this was better, that the organic life was preserved in the form of a Reaper after the harvest and the cycle could continue. I thought that was a load of crap.

Leviathan had created him. The intelligence didn’t see it as a betrayal, he saw it as doing his job when he created Harbinger out of Leviathan’s race. They were organics who could create synthetics; therefore they had to be harvested. Otherwise there would be conflict. I pointed out the window to demonstrate the true idiocy of that remark. He compared it to a forest fire – without the fire, there could be no new growth, and the old growth would choke and decay.

He was talking to me because I’d changed everything. The old solution wasn’t going to work anymore, and he couldn’t implement a new one. It had to be me. The first solution was to destroy the Reapers. That’s what I’d intended to do all along. But he said that the Crucible would destroy all synthetic life, and pointed out how much of me was synthetic. The implication was clear. To destroy the Reapers, I had to sacrifice EDI, the geth, myself, and anyone else relying on cybernetics to live.

I could take control of the Reapers. Tim had been mostly right, but he couldn’t have done it because he was indoctrinated. I would die. Mostly. Everything about me that made me human would be gone, but my memories and beliefs would live on and be able to control the Reapers.

Something was starting to feel off to me.

The intelligence presented a third choice: let the Crucible break down everything that I am and then spread it throughout the galaxy. Combined with the intelligence’s energy and the power of the Crucible, it would rewrite everything. Organics would become partly synthetic, and the synthetics would have true understanding of organics. He’d apparently tried this before, but it never worked because organics weren’t ready. That was what made me such an anomaly: I was ready. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why this bothered me, but it did.

So my choices: sacrifice all the AIs I’d worked hard to keep alive to destroy the reapers, turn myself into the new intelligence and take control of the Reapers, play God and rewrite every living being in the galaxy, or walk away and let the cycle continue. None of them were any good.


	79. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard makes her choice.

I’m sure every being in the galaxy will have their own opinion on this one. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad that it was my opinion that mattered in the end. Walking away wasn’t an option. I couldn’t do that. If I did that, then this entire fight had been for nothing. Rewriting everything in the galaxy… that went against everything I stood for, everything I fought for. Independence. Choices. Diversity. It sounded like paradise, but what would really happen? Controlling the Reapers, well, they weren’t independent organisms with free will in the first place, they were already under the control of the current intelligence.

EDI, Legion, forgive me, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to sacrifice synthetic life, but this is what we’d fought for. I remembered a conversation with Legion, asking if his people deserved to die. They didn’t then, and I found a way to save them. They deserved it even less now. But I also remembered a conversation with EDI. She’d rewritten her programming to include self-sacrifice in pursuit of a good enough cause. EDI, I hope destroying the Reapers and ending this all is a good enough cause for you to accept my choice to sacrifice you. Legion, I’m sorry about the geth, but wouldn’t you rather die free than be…

I get it now. I know what bothered me so much after the intelligence suggested taking control. If the Crucible couldn’t discriminate between Reaper and non-Reaper to destroy, how could it do so for assuming control? Either I would take control of the geth, of EDI… or they may not have been destroyed. And synthesis… this was Saren’s plan. I’d seen how well that had worked out for Saren.

Destroying the Reapers was the only solution that I knew would keep this from happening again. If we created new synthetics that turned on us, well, that was on us. The intelligence said it was inevitable. Maybe it is. But that’s what I’d always fought for: the chance for every being to live and die on its own terms. It’s why the Reapers were such a horror. They took that away from us.

I heard my friends as I staggered toward the block keeping the Crucible from firing. Javik reminding me that tough choices must be made to end a war. Legion reminding me that the geth did not want war, that they wanted to work with the quarians but the quarians wouldn’t allow it. Mordin talking about the genophage, and how it was different from genocide. Hell, the rachni queen, asking me to spare her, not to end her people. I’d taken so many risks to avoid genocide, and yet, here I was committing it after all. I heard the judge convicting me as a war criminal for my actions at Aratoht. Spirits look after him, I heard Sparatus yelling at me for freeing the rachni. So much had gone into leading up to this moment, and here I was making yet another impossible decision, one that would shape the entire future of our galaxy. The last thing I heard was something I’d never actually heard Kaidan say, it was from one of his letters, but it was his voice telling me how good he felt knowing that I was out there making those impossible choices. It was a good last memory.

Everything around me went red as I shot out the block. The pain… oh god, the pain intensified until I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore. But I saw the Crucible powering up. I saw it fire.

Then everything went black.

I don’t know what’s going on. Am I dead? Am I caught between life and death? I can’t hear anything, can’t feel anything but this intense pain. I wish I could remember at least a little about the time between Alchera and waking up on Lazarus Station. This isn’t what I thought being dead would feel like, but if I’m alive, then where am I? What’s going on?

Maybe this is Hell. I can accept that. The choices I’ve made, the sacrifices, the lives I must have ruined… I can easily imagine ending up in Hell. It means I’m breaking so many promises, though.

Suddenly, there’s light. What’s this light doing here? I didn’t think I could feel any more pain, but this light is bad. A flash of memory, Benezia dying, saying there was no light… and then I hear it. “Sir! Got a breather!”

“Any identification?”

“Dogtags…” I can’t quite feel it, but he’s picking up the tags around my neck. “They’re too melted to read a name, but she’s N7. That ought to help narrow it down.”

“N7?” Footsteps grow closer. “I need a shuttle with a medical team at these coordinates, now! And someone get a message to Hackett. Unidentified female N7 officer, unknown rank, found alive in rubble.” Whoever it is sits beside me. “Ma’am, you hang in there. I don’t know your rank, so forgive the impertinence if you’re higher than Staff Lieutenant, but that is a goddamn order. We’ve already lost too many. We need you if we’re going to rebuild the Navy.”

I can feel them getting what little is left of my armor off. And then the medical team arrives, and I can sink into blissful unconsciousness as the pain begins to fade away.


	80. Waking Up

_“Shepard? What’s going on?” Kaidan asks, gun aimed at me but not like he’s about to shoot._

_“Stand down, Kaidan. Udina’s working with Cerberus.”_

_“Don’t listen to her! She’s with Cerberus, not me!” Udina snapped._

_“Shepard… you’ve got guns drawn on the Council. You’ve got to admit, it looks pretty bad.”_

_“Kaidan, you know me better than that. Trust me.”_

_“I want to, Shepard. But you have to admit… you killed one council, and you and Udina in particular don’t get along well.”_

_“Screw this! We don’t have the time! I’m opening the elevator!” Udina went for the console._

_I trained my gun on him, ready to shoot. Kaidan stepped in between us. “There are Cerberus troops right behind me in the elevator! Kaidan…” Kaidan didn’t move. I had to act. I put a bullet into him. He dropped, and Garrus was quick enough to get the shot on Udina._

_“Oh god… Kaidan… why? Why wouldn’t you step aside? Why didn’t you have your barriers up?”_

_“Shepard… couldn’t let you… couldn’t trust you.”_

I wake up screaming. It isn’t much of a scream, my throat feels like it’s made of sandpaper, but it’s enough for a nurse to come running in. She reaches for me, pushes me back down in bed. “Ma’am. Try to calm down, hold still. You shouldn’t…”

“I shot him. Oh god, I _shot_ him.”

“Shot who? Ma’am, you’ve been in here for three months, you haven’t shot anyone.”

“I shot him… I shot him…”

“Ma’am! Calm down. I promise, you didn’t shoot him. But you need to calm down. You shouldn’t even be awake…” She checks something off to the side, monitors or medications or something. I'm not really paying much attention to her.

I’m still not sure what to believe. So much of what I’ve been through feels so surreal, so impossible. I can barely move. “Can you at least tell me some things? What’s… why have I been here for three months?”

“I’ll give you some answers if you promise to calm down, but they’re keeping a lot of things classified when it comes to you. You’re in the Alliance navy, apparently someone important enough that there’s more security here than there is at the temporary government headquarters Admiral Hackett’s set up down the street.”

“So… you don’t know who I am?” Before I say anything, I need to know what she does. If they're keeping me classified, I will be damned if I'm the one to leak it. Hackett's got to have a good reason, and if nothing else, keeping me classified means no reporters to deal with. Minimal politicians.

“I know enough to… wait.” The nurse suddenly goes pale. “Do you not?”

“I’m… my memories are kind of all jumbled up, I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not,” I say. It’s not even much of a lie. Half the stuff I remember... those can't have happened, can they? “But I think I remember being convicted as a war criminal? So that would explain the security…”

“You’ve been in a coma for three months and you were supposed to be asleep for at least one more,” the nurse says. “I’m pretty sure the security is to keep people away from you.”

“Oh. So what can you tell me? Why was I in a coma?”

“You were badly wounded in the war. We don’t know for sure what happened. We were hoping you could tell us. When they found you, you were covered in blood, and buried in rubble. If it weren’t for the light glinting off your dog tag, they don’t know that they’d have found you.”

“Good thing I was wearing them, then." Light off dog tags... the memories of searching the wreckage of Alchera flared in my head. "How bad? How much rebuilding did you have to do?” Is Miranda here? She rebuilt me once, and this time, she had a live subject to start with. That would explain why I'm here.

“It was a miracle… you had several broken bones, a pierced lung, you were in shock from blood loss and badly dehydrated, but somehow not only did you pull through, but you didn’t lose the baby.”

I can't have heard that right. “I’m sorry, lose the what now?”

“The baby?" I'd heard right. It was impossible, but that's what she was claiming. "Of course, I don’t suppose you’d have known… given that the baby’s only fourteen weeks along and you’ve been in a coma for nearly all of them.”

“But… I can’t… I’m...” I lie still, trying to process this. It has to have happened the night of the party, right? Not that the exact night matters, but that seems the most likely. Thank god I can be sure it’s Kaidan’s. “I have to tell him…” I’m asleep before I can finish the sentence.


	81. Chapter 81

_The beacon lights up. “KAIDAN!” I go to knock him out of the way, but Ashley’s faster as she grabs hold, pulls me back. I watch in horror as Kaidan is lifted off the ground, as the light engulfs him. His body is limp when he hits the ground, and I can’t tell if he’s alive or dead until I notice the breathing. We get the hell out of there. Kaidan doesn’t wake up._

_Six weeks later, Kaidan still hasn’t wakened. And word’s come from the asari that the Citadel has fallen, taken by a race of machines that call themselves Reapers._

_Kaidan wakes up, but it’s too late. He tells me about the vision, and I have to tell him that it’s all real, that we’re fighting, but they seem impossible to kill._

When I wake up this time, there’s a doctor standing over me. She jumps in surprise as I try to scream. It’s a better effort than the last one. “Gods, I didn’t believe the report that you’d woken up yesterday. How are you feeling?”

“Like I was buried in rubble after I forgot that blood goes on the inside.” I try to sit up again. I’m a little less confused this time. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes. The nurse yesterday said you weren’t too sure?”

“I know who I am. I just also know that if Hackett doesn’t want it spread around, I’m not going to disobey orders. And I wasn’t lying about the memories being all fuzzy and confused, especially toward the end.”

“All right. So, Commander, is there anyone here on Earth you can call to come help you sort things out?”

“Do you… do you know what happened to the Normandy?” I haven’t really let myself think of it, but everyone I’d want with me is on that ship. I guess I could call my parents, but they’re probably busy helping with cleanup.

“Sorry, Commander. Ship and fleet locations are out of my classified status. I can ask Hackett.”

“Shit. My friends who aren’t on the ship are probably dealing with their own problems. I… I suppose I could try calling Kaidan’s family… not that they’d know me.”

“Give me a name, we’ll track them down if we can.”

“Evelyn Alenko, or her daughter Aura… crap. I don’t know if she kept Alenko or changed to her husband’s name when she got married.”

“We’ll look. Yesterday, you were distraught about shooting someone…”

“Yeah. If I’m pregnant, then it was just a nightmare. Very vivid. Doesn’t mean he’s alive, though.”

The doctor goes to a terminal nearby. Admiral Hackett’s face comes on the vidscreen. I nearly cry. “Sir, our patient is awake several days ahead of schedule. She has a lot of questions I can’t answer for her. When you have time, I’m sure she’d love to speak to you.”

“I can talk now. Shepard… what are you doing awake?”

“Nightmares, sir. Couldn’t sleep anymore.”

“I know you must be curious about what happened after the Crucible fired. What do you remember?”

“I’m not sure, sir. My head’s still foggy. I’m hoping when the pain and the drugs clear up, so will my memories.”

“Well, damned if I know what you did, but the Crucible exploded in this bright red shockwave. As soon as the light reached a Reaper, the Reaper went completely dead. Orbit’s still cluttered with Reaper debris and pieces of ships, although the fleets are working on clearing that up. Then it hit the mass relay, and the relay went into overdrive. It broke into pieces, but the asari say they can rebuild it. They’re working on that now. We’ve only gotten scattered reports from other places in the galaxy. Some of the fleet made it out to Arcturus, some of it’s still here in our system.”

“The Normandy?”

“Isn’t in either place, Commander. I don’t know where it is. There are witnesses that say it made the jump, so right now, we’re going with the theory that the shockwave hit it and knocked it out of the jump somewhere. We’re not writing them off yet, Commander.”

I close my eyes. Three months, they’re telling me. The Normandy has been missing for three months. And I’m tied to this bed. I can’t just let go and stop fighting, let myself die so I can be with them. Not if I’m carrying Kaidan’s baby. I don’t know if Hackett can tell when the tears start to leak out of my eyes.

“Commander, we’re doing everything we can to find them. In the meantime, your mother’s alive. Her ship made it to Arcturus. She’s helped take charge out there, get things organized to repair things. The relay there is broken, too, but they're working on it.”

“What… what about my dad? I’d heard he was MIA a week or so before…”

“I’m sorry. We… the civilians reported his ship destroyed. No survivors.”

“Thanks for not telling me before we made our run. I didn’t need the distraction of mourning my father.”

“Anything else you want to know about?”

I start to ask about the geth, but change my mind. “No, sir. Not right now. Please, let me know the second you hear anything about the Normandy? And tell my mother I’m alive, next time you talk to her. She’ll… she could use the good news.”

“Understood, Commander. Hackett out.”

The doctor looks over. “I’ve found a comm for Evelyn Alenko. Do you want me to call her?”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality applies to my superior officers too, right?”

“Nothing you say leaves this room unless you or Mrs. Alenko decides it does.”

“Do it. She deserves to know.”

The second the face hits my vidscreen, I’m crying again. It’s obvious how much Kaidan takes after his mother. “Mrs. Alenko, we’ve never spoken before, but I think you’ll know why I’m calling you. I’m Commander Shepard.”

“Shepard. Kaidan talked about you a great deal. But no, I don’t know why you’re calling.”

Oh, right. “I’m sorry, I should have realized… Kaidan and I left Earth together, to get help, and while we were out there, we managed to repair things between us. Kaidan said he’d told you what we had been, before I died.”

“He also told me that he wasn’t sure about you being you when you came back, although he was sure enough that what I’d been hearing about you was wrong. And then that you wouldn’t write back to him.”

“Like I said, we managed to fix things. We went through a lot out there, and it reminded both of us what was important.”

“Well, I don’t know where Kaidan is. They tell me he was part of the push to the Citadel, but that they haven’t found a body.”

“They won’t, Mrs. Alenko. He was badly hurt, but I managed to get him evacuated to the Normandy. Of course, the Normandy is missing.”

“Well, at least I know he’s not buried in some rubble in London.”

“Has there been any word on your husband?”

“No. There’s been nothing for over four months now.”

“I’m so sorry. The last I heard, a week or so before the battle, Emma was serving on my mother’s ship, and I just got word that Mom’s safe in the Arcturus system.”

“That is good news. It’s not definitive, but it’s a good reason to hope. Thank you, Commander.”

“Mrs. Alenko, there’s something you should know. It was an accident, but I’m pregnant with Kaidan’s child.”

“You’re sure it’s Kaidan’s?”

“Either it’s Kaidan’s or I should’ve paid more attention to religion, because divine intervention is the only other possibility.”

“I see. Where are you?”

I look to my doctor. I don’t even know if I'm still in London. “We’re in Croydon, about twelve miles south of London.”

“Well then, hold tight, Commander. I’ll find a way to get there. You don’t need to be pregnant and alone and worried.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Alenko.”

“Nonsense. You’re carrying my grandchild, you call me Evelyn.”

“Heh. I’d tell you to call me Juliet, but… nobody does that. Not even Kaidan most of the time.”

She hangs up laughing. I do my best to stay awake. I’ve slept so much. But I think that sneaky doctor slipped me something.


	82. Chapter 82

The jump goes wrong almost as soon as it begins. Kaidan's still half in his armor as he stumbles up to the cockpit, up to find Joker's hands flying over controls and EDI working frantically to correct things.

He's there when EDI's body just goes... blank.

"EDI?" Joker shouts. "EDI, this is no time for pranks! I need your help, this jump's all wrong!"

There's no response. Kaidan shoots an apologetic look at Joker as he pulls EDI's body out of the copilot chair and starts doing his best to help out. Joker glares at him for a second, but there's too much to do for old grudges or new angers to get in the way of flying. Even with Kaidan's help, things are rapidly worsening for the Normandy.

There's no warning before the jump breaks. Joker starts swearing, loudly and creatively, trying to get the Normandy back under control. Kaidan leaves him to it, heading for the galaxy map. He passes Cortez. "I know she's no shuttle, but go see if you can help Joker, will you?" Cortez nods and heads up to the front.

Kaidan stares at the galaxy map in shock. He knows Shepard and Traynor had it modified to show Reaper signals, but when he looks at Earth... there's nothing. No glowing red squids over any of the other occupied systems. As near as he can tell, no Reaper activity at all. That's the good news.

The bad news: he can't find any sign of mass relays, either.

He can worry about that later, though. He's got to figure out where they are. He zooms the map in, waiting for Normandy's signal to show up. The good news: if Joker can't get the Normandy flying properly, there's a habitable planet nearby to crash on. The bad news: if the mass relays are out, it's at least a six week trip back to Earth. And that's assuming the FTL drive hasn't been too badly damaged, that fuel holds out, there's a million other things that have to go right.

First things first. Right now, he needs to know how bad off Normandy is. He heads back to the cockpit. Joker barely looks away from his controls. "We're in a somewhat-controlled drift, Kaidan. It won't hold, and I can't get control back unless EDI decides it's a good time to come online."

"Could you if we stopped somewhere?"

"Maybe, but where are we gonna stop, and how? Somewhat-controlled. There's no way I can do any kind of docking maneuver."

"There's a planet nearby. Your control good enough to minimize the crash?"

Joker gulped and turned to stare at Kaidan. "You're kidding, right? You're not seriously suggesting that we deliberately crash the Normandy?"

"I don't like it either, Joker. What are our options? Keep drifting, hope comms are working enough that we can put in a call for help and wait for rescue? Mass relays are out. Even if we can call for help, it'll be weeks. On the planet, there's at least a chance that we can find food and water so we don't use up our supplies."

Joker took the readings, got the ship pointed in the direction of the planet. He turned to look at Kaidan. "Shouldn't you be in medbay? You look awful. If you die out here because you're not taking time to get treated, Shepard's gonna kill you."

"I know. She might even be almost as mad about that than she would be if I lost the Normandy." Kaidan held up his hands. "I'm going."


	83. Chapter 83

Joker does a great job of crashing the ship without damaging it much more than it already was. Liara takes charge of organizing testing to make sure the air is safe to breathe and the native life probably won't kill them. Tali disappears into the AI core, only coming out when Garrus goes in and literally forces her out for food or sleep. Traynor sets to work figuring out long-range communications. Adams, Daniels, and Donnelly draft everyone with any knowledge of engineering to help repair things.

Kaidan does his best to make sure that everyone's getting food and sleep, that Normandy's crew isn't burning themselves out trying to fix the ship. He's busy most of the time, helping Liara run tests on potential food sources or helping Adams repair the ship or helping Chakwas treat the various injuries that are coming up.

It's only when he goes to Shepard's quarters that he really starts to feel anything but exhausted or driven. He still makes himself go every day, to feed the fish and make sure Fuzzbucket's got everything he needs. Being there without Shepard, though... it kills him. It's worse than Alchera. At least with Alchera, he knew. He couldn't sleep in her bed, not without her, not while he was still thinking of it as her bed. Her fish. Her quarters. So he slept in the pods, like everyone else, or outside. It was warm enough, and they had camping gear.

Slowly, things start coming together. Adams gets the engines online, Joker sorts out navigation. Liara finds food and water, and makes sure to load a generous supply of both for the trip back. Tali reports that she's got no idea what happened to EDI - from what she can tell, EDI should be online and working as normal, but she's just... not. Traynor's still working on long-range comms - the QEC is not working, and that's more likely on Earth's end than theirs. She's working on making normal long-range comms work, but it's going to take a while.

A month after the crash, they're underway. Normandy lifts off, Kaidan finds which way to point her, and they head home.

Now that things are somewhat more normal, Kaidan's job becomes harder. He's gotta keep morale up, keep everyone hopeful. He waffled a bit before talking to Liara about putting together a memorial. "I know we should honor those we lost. It's just... it's Shepard and EDI. Shepard means so much to this crew's morale, but she... we all know the odds of her being alive. And EDI. She's clearly gone now, but we might be able to bring her back at some point. When we get back, and can get expert help from the quarians - and the geth if they weren't affected."

"Ask Joker about EDI. If anyone has the right to decide about her, it would be him. As for Shepard... I don't know, Kaidan. I want to believe she's alive. But maybe it's best to put her up on the wall and prepare to get back to her being dead, so our return isn't spoiled. Just remind people that she's been killed before, and that wasn't the end."

Joker insists that EDI be added to the wall. There are a few other names - not as many as Kaidan would have predicted, before the push to Earth. He stands there, holding Shepard's plaque.

Joker carries EDI's plaque up and sets it on the wall. He turns to face everyone. "When I first met EDI, I hated her. I sabotaged her, fought her, pranked her. And she did the same to me. But then... she saved the Normandy. I freed her. She could have turned on us. But she didn't. She saved us all. Even when she had to pretend to be a VI, she kept working for the good of the Normandy and her crew. Without EDI, Shepard's team would have died on the Cerberus base without doing much of anything. Cerberus was evil, there's no denying that anymore. But they did do a few good things. EDI was one of the best things they ever did. I'm not giving up on Tali, on the experts we might be able to find when we get home. But EDI was as much a part of htis crew as anyone, and I don't want there to be any doubt about that in anyone's mind."

Kaidan looks down at Shepard's plaque again. He stepped up, stares at the wall. Her name is supposed to go right under Admiral Anderson's. But he can't do it. "We all know the odds here. Shepard, most likely, died in the battle. Even if she was successful, she wouldn't have hesitated to sacrifice her life for it. But we all remember Shepard's been killed before, and all it did was piss her off. Unlike EDI, there's no one who would ever question that Shepard was part of this crew. Shepard was this crew. Many of us are here for one reason: because Shepard asked. So I'm not going to put Shepard on this wall until I see a corpse and know there's no Project Lazarus underway. Shepard once told me that when things were dark, when there was little reason to believe we'd get through this, a friend reminded her that hope wasn't up on this wall." Garrus snorts, and Kaidan grins at him. "Well, hope's still not on here, so I'm not putting Shepard up there either."

**Author's Note:**

> Every comment gives me +5 War Resources! Help save the galaxy!


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